The Dumb About Men Club

And then he was just there, filling up the space. He was pissed.

"Miss Linda," he nodded to my aunt. "I'm finding out what happened and who's responsible. They sent a lot of people home, quickly. I'm working on it. Ladies," he nodded his head towards Shalimar and Kenni and was halfway back across the waiting room when he stopped short, one leg suspended mid step for a second. He did a slow turn, taking in both Shalimar and Kenni head to toe and said, "Naw."

He walked away in huge strides and was down the corridor. All four of us leaned over to watch his departure until he was out of sight.

"Sistas, that is the most prime piece of hindquarters I have seen in a long time," Shalimar said.

I couldn't be sure, but I heard a very soft sound come out of my Aunt Linda that might have been, "Yum".

"Are you sure that was Jacobson? Lanky, tooth-picky-like Basketball Jason? Has he been lifting weights or something?" Kenni said, looking at my Aunt Linda.

"Or something," Aunt Linda said. "He inherited his great uncle's business out in the suburbs of New Orleans. Jake has been down there working double shifts for years. He was doing the books and marketing and growing the business at night," Linda paused, "and lifting those big those heavy shutters, siding and roofing onto trucks. I guess it's done the boy some good."

"I'll say. Brains and brawn, mmmnn, hmmn." Kenni said.

"I would start lifting shutters if I thought my butt would look that good in a pair of jeans," Aunt Linda said.

"Sam will be on his way to Europe in about two hours," Shalimar said looking at her watch.

"You don't cheat," Kenni said.

"I lust." Shalimar said. "But, no I don't cheat,

"Good, then he's all mine," Kenni said.

"I saw him first," I said. It felt good to make light of a grim situation; we all new it.

"Actually I saw him first," Aunt Linda drawled.

"Don't blame you for looking," Shalimar said. Her mouth still didn't move. "He does have the finest butt I've ever seen. Thank God he didn't wear baggy jeans."

"And I do like younger men," Aunt Linda continued.

"Aunt Linda!" I said.

Linda put a shoulder forward and pressed her cheek to mine. "He's awfully cute, and there's that toushy!" She smirked. "What is he? Mid-forties? I could easily do that."

"He's thirty-nine. You're sixty-three!" I said.

"He's only thirty-nine? With all that grey hair? Because if he could be say, forty-five, I don't look a day over fifty-seven, and really that wouldn't be that much. Hell, everybody knows that Beatrice Dantles is 14 years older than her husband."

I squinted at my aunt and reminded myself that she was indeed my favorite relative. "Aunt Linda, it may be true that you don't look a day over fifty-seven. But no amount of moisturizer is going to make up for the fact that you're in your sixties and he's in his thirties."

"Are you absolutely sure he's 39? That shock of silver hair and the way he takes control of a situation makes him seem a lot older. Perhaps I could spread a rumor that he was in his late forties."

"You're still in you're sixties."

"Hush, nobody knows that."

"Everybody knows that! You were born here. You've lived here all your life."

"I've been lying about my age for a long time; everyone thinks I'm in my mid-fifties. I swear." Aunt Linda looked down the hallway where Jake had disappeared. "Despite the tendency in his family for a pot belly, which I would be willing to overlook, he is quite, um, delectable. As edible as a cinnamon bun. Are you sure he's not 40 yet?"

"Argh. Cheryl is our age, and her brother is only three years older, so that means, yes I'm sure; he's thirty-nine. So my question is, do you like your men twenty-three years younger than you?

"Well that would be pushing it, Dear, even for me. I'll leave him for you little youngins. But just for the record I did see him first and I did, very easily, rope him into coming to help. He's a knight in shining armor."

"I'd rather he be a knight in nothing at all," Shalimar said.

"Shal, you're treating him like he's a dessert or a buffet set out for us to drool over or a fruit, ripe for plucking," I said.

"Amen, Sister. Speak of the key lime pie, here comes Mister Golden Corral/ Eden's Apple again."

Chapter 11

I turned around and there was Jason "Call-me-Jake" Jacobson himself, still looking fierce and dragging a young man with him who didn't look more than twenty. The boy was Latino, short, with a shaved head and the beginnings of a goatee. I couldn't place him, but he looked sort of familiar.

"Why don't you tell these nice people what you told me, Joe."

"I think I should get a lawyer." Joe started to squirm.

"Why? You haven't done anything wrong," Jake said.

"The hospital might not want me saying anything."

"But you've already talked to me, so you might as well repeat it," Jake said.

I could see that Joe was trying, in his head, to argue with this logic and was not getting very far. I could also see by the look on Jake's eyes that he was about to put what we call the Savannah squeeze on Joe.

I gave a pointed look at Aunt Linda and bobbed my head in the direction of her friend Mark, who was quietly snoring with his head tilted back, in a row of orange seats in one corner. Aunt Linda went over and kicked him in the shin.

"What, what? Have they released him? Is he better?" Mark is about 5'8", mostly bald, and looks like a Muppet. It's this gentle look that often gets people to lower their defenses and underestimate him.

Aunt Linda cleared her throat and gestured with her head towards the EMT. Either Mark heard part of the conversation in his sleep, Aunt Linda said a lot with her look, or Mark wakes up knowing when a lawyer is needed.

"I'm a lawyer," he said softly. "My name's Mark Nabil, and I can represent you."

"I can't afford a lawyer. Hell I don't know."

"Listen, it's okay. Mark moved closer to Joe. "You can hire me, on retainer, for one dollar. Once you hire me, I have to act in your best interest, not in anyone else's. That means that I have to advise you on what is best for you. I can protect you from the hospital if they try to fire you for telling the truth. And if they do fire you, we can get money for that."

"Really?"

"Really."

"If something went wrong, wouldn't you rather just be able to tell the truth about it rather than hide it?" Mark said.

Joe nodded.

"Okay. Let's you and I find a place we can talk alone before we talk to all these people at once, agreed?"

"Agreed." Joe nodded again.

Mark led Joe off and we all looked at Jake.

Jake blew out a big breath as he shook his shoulders. He walked closer to us. "I think I recognize you two. You're Shortcake and Perfume, aren't you?"

"Jake, may I re-present my two best friends, Shalimar Leggond formerly Brown and McKenzie Wong-Levinson." I tried not to grin. "Perfume and Strawberry Shortcake, this is Jason Jacobson, who is now called Jake."

"Shalimar, therefore the nickname Perfume, and Strawberry Shortcake for the hair. Hhhmn." He looked at me.

"I'm surprised you remember us at all," Shalimar said with just a subtle hint of flirtation in her voice.

"Well, three very beautiful and different young girls just on the other side of a short line of bushes, with all those teenage hormones, it's probably half the reason I practiced hoops so much."

"It's probably half the reason we played at Dahlya's so much," Kenni said with flirtation in her voice. She surprised me with the outgoingness of the comment, after how depressed she was moments before. She was fingering the necklace. I think it gave her confidence.

Jake's gaze dropped to her chest and he noticed the necklace, although I'm sure he noticed more too. "Do you always wear diamonds with overalls?"

"Yes."

Chapter 12

Jake was saved from more flirtations from the three of us because Joe, the EMT, and Mark, the lawyer, came back.

Joe spoke very simply. "Alright. The patient was losing a lot of blood. Even though his pinky toe was cut off, he still shouldn't have been losing that much blood. The other EMT thought it would be a good idea to give him blood. So he asked the patient what blood type he was and he said 'B positive.'"

I nodded at Joe to go on. Both Rick and I were B positive. We joked that we were both B+ students in high school so it was easy to remember our blood type.

"So my partner said to me, 'yo, get out some B positive. I looked, no B positive. My partner takes out all the bags, searching. Throws a pint of AB out of the way. It lands sort of on the patient's lower abdomen.

"Then we pulled into the emergency bay and a couple of guys unloaded our patient and that was that. From there I can't really tell you. I'm guessing the patient passed out from blood loss, one of the nurses saw the bag of AB on his stomach, assumed that was his blood type and IV'd it into him. Someone must have done it, because I heard the nurses yelling and running back and forth once the seizures started. I came in a few minutes later and said, thank God y'all have enough B positive here. Then the whole ER room just stopped. It was like one of those moments in the movies when everyone realizes that they are sitting on top of a bomb and there's complete silence. Then everyone was flying ... trying to figure out how to do damage repair. But a few seconds later it was too late."

We all stared at him in horror.

I began blinking and I couldn't stop. The words he said didn't make sense all of a sudden. What was he talking about? What patient? What happened? What was he saying?

The rest of my premonition came back to me now. The first part had one sword beheading him and then two swords had fallen on his feet, intersecting each other. Then they began chopping up his body from the very tip of his big toes up and up through the bones of the foot up through to the ankle, one after another, faster and faster like a medieval torture device. That part I remembered every day, but tried my hardest not to think about.

The second part of the vision I had suppressed until now. It was different than any premonition I had ever had, because it was more like a dream. Now I remembered. Rick was tied to a gurney and drowning in blood, tubes attached to him everywhere. 'No, no', he kept shouting. The blood turned black and gushed out of his toes, his fingers, his nose. It spurted from his tongue and filled his mouth, drowning him. It grew viscous, dark, and heavy and continued to pour out of his mouth until it choked him and swallowed his whole body under.

I began to gag. My eyes rolled upwards and I fought to stay conscious. I heard a voice in my head, my own voice but with an exaggerated British accent say, 'It was a simple mistake really.' The room was beginning to spin a little. I sat on the edge of a chair and hung my head between my knees.

"Everyone who was in the ER when it happened was sent home immediately," the EMT said. "They've slated the body for cremation already."

"Jake!" I yelled, looking up.

"I'm on it," he said and left running.

"Why are you still hanging around the hospital, Joe?" Shalimar asked.

"They sent me home too, with pay, a few minutes after I brought that patient in, but my lady and I share a car and she works night shift at the firehouse in Rincon. She doesn't get off for another hour so I was stuck outside just smoking and wondering how crazy things happen."

"I can drive you home if you'd like, it's on my way," Mark said, putting a hand on Joe's shoulder.

"Oh, man that would be great. I could call my lady. It would save us the time and the gas."

When they left, the silence was loud. I noticed the buzzing sounds the florescent lights made, something you usually ignore.

My heart thumped, each beat pulsing in my ears. My brain wasn't working and my eyes couldn't seem to stop blinking. Everything was far away, fuzzy, unreal.

"They gave him the wrong type of blood," I said. "They killed him."

Right then I felt part of me detach and float up to ceiling. It was as if a safety device was triggered and a small part of my being was locked away to be saved for safer times.

I wanted to be hugged, loved, safe.

I looked at Aunt Linda. "They'll cremate him anyway, won't they? Before an autopsy, before anything?"

"Probably." Aunt Linda said and nodded, sadly. "This is Savannah. Cops, doctors, and politicians will do whatever they want to do."

"The body is yours, not the hospital's." Shalimar said softly. "You could take the body now, and I think you should."

I looked at her, aghast. Where would I put it?

I looked at Aunt Linda.

"Why not?" She shrugged. "We'll put it in my meat freezer. I've got plenty of room. This is Savannah. One little ole' dead body isn't gonna bother anyone."

I nodded and we all got up to find the morgue.

Chapter 13

The morgue was in the basement. Jake had cornered a young clerk and had him backed up against the wall, obviously making him uncomfortable. The clerk was six-foot five, with dark brown skin and hundreds of tiny braids down to his waist, tied neatly away from his face. He was shaking his head. "I can't change the orders just because you say so."

"Yes, you can, and you can tell me who signed the orders in the first place."

"I'm very sorry, Sir, but the answer is still no. I can't give out that information."

"You'll tell me."

I tilted my head to one side.

"Men are such lovely, fascinating creatures," Shalimar said in a voice so low I knew only Aunt Linda, Kenni, and I heard. I wasn't looking at her but I would have bet that her mouth didn't move. I wondered if she was staring at Jake's butt.

I cleared my throat. Jake turned around and the clerk seemed grateful for the interruption.

"I'd like to see my husband," I said with quiet dignity. I wished for a moment that I was wearing the diamonds.

"Of course," the clerk said and looked down at his clipboard. "What's your name?"

"Dahlya Strickland."

It took the clerk a second to realize that my last name and the person that Jake was harassing him about were the same.

"Of course," he said. He looked from me to Jake to me again. Jake gave him a quick shake and then backed away from him.

He walked over to a drawer in the wall, just like you see on TV, and opened it to reveal a black body bag. I stared at the bag for a second. I opened the very top of the zipper just the tiniest bit.

It was Rick's hair. He had the greatest hair. It was thick and fell in perfect waves.

I looked down at the top of Rick's hair. Still perfect.

"You don't have to do this," Jake said. "I'm sure that your Aunt..."

"No, no," I said. "I'll do it."

I pulled the zipper down further, in one quick tug, to reveal his head and shoulders. It was Rick's face but no life was there. It was like a perfect mannequin of him. Something they might have used at the news studio. I could feel my eyes roll up into my head. My legs became gelatin. I had a quick moment to think, 'Naw... it's all a practical joke' before my knees gave out and I crumpled to the floor with a thud.

Apparently no one thought that I might buckle so suddenly, so I ended up on the cold linoleum before anyone reached me. Kenni and Jake reached me at the same time. Kenni was closer but Jake was faster.

"Naaaawwww," I said and lifted my head. The absence of sound was striking. I couldn't hear anything, not even my own labored breathing. I was deaf. Then there was buzzing. Like the sound of florescent lights but louder. "ZZZZzzzz," I said, my voice sounding as if it was coming through miles of insulation stuffed in a tunnel. "Zzz?" I asked Jake. "Do you hear that?" Maybe it's the low hum of refrigerators. Oh, like to keep dead bodies cool. The moment I thought that my mind snapped shut and I passed out.

Chapter 14

I woke up with a start not knowing where I was. I was cradled in my Aunt Linda's lap. Shalimar and Kenni were crouched near me and Jake was about a foot away. My hand shot out, seemingly of own accord and clawed into his jeans at the ankle. I don't know how it happened. It was like the need for him became a crushing weight.

I forced myself to let go.

"I think I can stand now," I said.

Jake helped me up, and then offered Aunt Linda his hand as well.

I need him, part of my brain whispered. The desire to reach over and hold his hand and have him squeeze mine was overwhelming.

I swayed a little.

Both Jake and Kenni reached toward me but I stepped back.

I turned toward the door and took some deep breaths. "Okay," I whimpered and my throat began to close and my eyes fill with tears. "I'm okay now," I said, although I obviously wasn't.

I walked back to Rick in the open drawer. His body was still there. His soul wasn't. This was real. "NOOOOOOO!" Emotions ran across me like elephants. Denial, anger, sadness, disbelief. They slammed into me so hard and so fast that a sharp stabbing pain pierced my chest. "No. No, no, no, no."

Shock took over, a glazed bubble traveling from my head to my feet like an igloo but colder. I heard a click go off in my brain, and the switch from shock, to sadness, to rage was so distinct it was like a gun cocking in a silent room.

Suddenly I was drunk with my own fury, my own power. I flung one hand out towards the morgue attendant and placed the other hand on Rick's chest. It was too soon for him to die. I could re-animate him. I knew it. I looked at Kenni, at Shalimar, down at myself. Three witches in the room. I looked at Jake, maybe four. Hhhhmn. I grit my teeth and tried to think of a rhyme as I began to visualize the life force coming out of everyone in the room and into Rick. I felt a crackling in my palms. I was stealing heaviest from the morgue attendant without even realizing it. It would probably kill us but I didn't care.

Shalimar's body blow took me by surprise and threw me up against the wall of metal drawers which the dead bodies.

I growled at her.

"Dahlya, you can't," Shalimar whispered. "It won't work and you'll kill an innocent person."

"It's too early. My premonition said the end of November. I should have a few more days, it's not fair." I sagged against Shalimar. "Y'all are my closest friends but he was my rock. I can't take it."

"Everything, everything is in its right time." Shalimar slapped me lightly on the cheek. "You can stay in shock, or need, or sadness as long as you need to." She lowered her voice, "what you can't do is mess with something that will just hurt us and not help Rick. Remember who you are, a dynamo with respect and dignity."

I nodded. She was right. "I want him back."

"We all want him back, honey."

"No one should die from a cut toe."

"No one should die from anything."

"Well, fuck," I whispered.

"You're a lady," Shalimar said.

"I'd like to take him home," I said to the clerk.

"You'd like to have an urn to take home after the cremation." He was very professional, distant. "I'm sure the funeral home will arrange that."

"No," I said. "I'm going to take him home now."

The clerk made a choking noise.

"You can't just take him home."

"Of course I can," I said. "He's not yours. He doesn't belong to you. You don't own him. He's my husband and I'm going to take him home."

"Wait," the clerk said stepping very close to me. "You're not just going to take a body out of here."

"Just watch me," I said.

Chapter 15

We walked out of the hospital and some of my tension faded but so did my bravado.

"My van probably has the most room," Kenni said, and we all nodded. We walked over to Kenni's white Astro, which she calls Astrolopithicus, and she moved her guitar out of the back seat and into the far back on top of her belongings.

I bumped against Jake's shoulder while we were putting Rick's body in the back seat. Electricity ran through me, hot and delicious and alive. I stopped for a second, shocked with the vast difference between the hot hum of Jake's electricity and the cold stone-like absence of all energy under my fingers touching the black body bag.