How High We Go in the Dark(33)

“Here’s my other boy,” my mom said as I entered the bubble. She had a breathing tube running across her nose and wheezed after she spoke. Her frail skin hung from her frame like a shawl.

“It’s good to see you, Mom,” I said.

I remembered this same pinched look too well, the way she’d bite her lip when my father yelled at me over dinner as a teenager. I’m just disappointed. We’re trying to help you, she’d say after lecturing me for my grades or for getting into fights. She’d tell my father to let it go, that I knew what I’d done, though sometimes, for weeks afterward, she’d float through the house, avoiding me, handing me my dinner without a word.

“And what will the great Dr. Bryan Yamato be having this evening?” I asked my brother as I sat down. He glared at me for a moment before handing me a menu.

“The abalone can’t be beat here,” he said. “This place is famous for it.”

I ordered the halibut with summer squash, a Manhattan, and took the last remaining oyster on the table while my brother stalled, sharing the details about the renovations on his house in Vegas, where Mom had been living the past couple of years, and some science project of his having to do with black holes that seemed wholly superfluous considering the world was being sucked up into its own asshole. Oh, and did I know his daughter, Petal, had just started junior high and was learning to ride a horse? And that his son, Peter, was learning how to play the electric guitar? No, of course I didn’t.

“And Dennis, you’re working at one of those death hotels now,” Bryan said. “Isn’t that right?”

“Few years now. They don’t have employee of the month or anything, no bonuses or stock options, but I’m doing okay. I’m the manager of two floors.” Of course, the floors in my charge, the econo-rest rooms, had never been renovated and still retained the building’s faux-Victorian aesthetic. Even in a hotel for the dead, life gave me scraps. Floral wallpaper peeled at the corners, a large water stain skirted the carpet of the broken ice machine, a growing colony of gum wrappers dotted the hall.

“Manager?” my mom said incredulously.

“Yep.”

“And what do you do, exactly?” Bryan asked.

“A little of everything, really. Part host, part mortician, part concierge. I take care of our customers’ needs,” I said. “Including the dead ones.” In the lobby of the hotel there’s a rack of literature—brochures and books on the grieving process, the services we and our affiliates provide. The covers are always ill-chosen and decades-old stock photos: A few depict people strolling through Golden Gate Park, laughing at god knows what. One just has a man in a neon tracksuit holding a Walkman over his head as if in victory. Life will go on. Room service is available until midnight. Outside delivery and catering should be arranged with Golden Dragon or Buca di Beppo. Dial 9 for maid service. Dial 8 for the on-call mortician. I always hide a bottle of Jim Beam and an emergency joint in the dryer of a defunct laundry room, so I can sneak away when the questions of the bereaved become too much— Excuse me, but my husband seems to be leaking. Does the hotel have erotic films for rent? But how can you be sure my sister isn’t contagious anymore? Of course, at the lower price point, I didn’t have it half as bad as the other floor managers with their bougie customers. Before the state started offering economy packages at a discount, finding bodies in the bay or in Golden Gate Park wasn’t uncommon. Most people were happy to be able to responsibly dispose of their loved ones at all.

“Oh,” my mother said. “How interesting.” I glanced at my phone for the first time since sitting down and felt Bryan’s eyes watching me. I checked my crypto holdings—fifty funerary inc tokens and 0.000068 Bitcoin.

“I’m buying, by the way,” Bryan said, clearly annoyed.

I ordered another Manhattan and concentrated on my food.

When our after-dinner coffee arrived, my mom gave Bryan a pointed look. Here we go.

“So, here’s the situation,” he said. “Mom’s real sick. We thought we got all the cancer cells a few years ago, but there are spots all over her lungs. We need help, Dennis. At home.”

“Okay, but what about a home aide or nurse?”

“Yeah, we’ve tried those. We’re paying out the nose for those. We were hoping you’d help out here. You weren’t around when Dad died.”

“I don’t like strangers in the house, poking around my things,” my mom said.

“So, I’d live in your house?” I asked.

“That’s the idea,” Bryan said.

“You’d have your own area,” my mom said. She leaned over the table, held out her hands, palms facing upward as if she wanted me to hold them. “I know this isn’t ideal—for any of us.”

I drank my coffee. I looked at a sea lion swimming outside, Alcatraz off in the distance. I once got into trouble there in middle school for leaving my field trip tour group. I snuck into a restricted part of the prison with a girl to smoke Parliament Lights and practice sticking our tongues down each other’s throat. Before that, my family thought I was a pretty good kid, I think, anyway. I folded my napkin into a shitty swan and tried waving down the waitress, sticking my arm out of our bubble for another drink. I did everything except look straight in front of me at the desperate old woman shrinking into her chair.