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do this?”
    Then I hear a
shriek in the tavern and something crashes against the bathroom door. I jump,
whip around to face the noise. I hear another scream followed by what sounds
like a bottle shattering. Someone with a deep voice shouts out a bunch of
things I can’t make out. There is a lot of shuffling on the wooden floor,
vibrating even the soles of my own feet.
    A bar fight.
Yes, that’s all I need. A bunch of intoxicated Undead men fighting to prove
each other’s manhood. I’d never considered whether Undead men could even get intoxicated until now. Maybe they pretend, just like they pretend
everything else. Clinging to the memory of a bar fight they experienced when
they were alive. Let’s recreate it. Let’s relive it.
    The Living
Dead world, you come to learn, is just a bunch of actors, and a regretfully bad
show of acting. Maybe life was like that too. Actors, playing the role of
themselves. Life’s greatest contradiction is also death’s.
    Closed up here
in this tiny bathroom, I just shut my eyes and wait for the show to end. The shouting,
the scuffle and kicking of feet against floor, the crashing and smashing of
bottles, I just shut my eyes and wait it out like I would an annoying person I
wish would shut up.
    Thoughts
entangle me like a web. I find myself staring at my face in the mirror, puzzled,
captivated by … I’m not sure … Am I remembering something?
    Am I
remembering me?
    Then without
warning, a young man quickly slips into the bathroom and shuts the door behind
him, pressing his body flat against it.
    I wasn’t
expecting this.
    His panicked
eyes, his warm brown eyes, they find mine—and horror fills them at once. Why he
has this reaction at seeing me, I don’t know.
    “You’re in the
ladies,” I decide to tell him.
    He puts a
finger to his lips, signaling that I should be quiet. His hand is trembling.
    “What’s so—?”
I start to ask, but his other hand goes to my mouth, silencing me at once.
    His soft, warm
hand.
    The violent
throws of bodies and glass continues for what feels like several minutes, and
then instantly falls silent. A single pair of footsteps crosses the tavern
floor as though pacing, one end of the tavern to the other, back and forth.
    The man holding
his warm hand to my mouth, I notice how strong his arms look. His broad
shoulders from which the arms come. His face reflects a warmth that stirs
something deep in me, something I’d assumed was lost. His five-o’clock-shadowed
rosy cheeks, I’m shocked that any miracle from the squatty pink Refinery could
replicate them. Or his lush lips. A noteworthy job they did on this rugged man
I have to admit, even despite the odd circumstance. His soft watery eyes are
more aware than any I’ve seen yet. I watch his forehead screw up in
concentration as he silently presses an ear to the door, listening with all his
body.
    Slowly, the
steps approach us. This guy’s grip on my mouth tightens so much, I have to
bring my own hand up to meet his. He seems to be holding his breath, squeezing
his eyes shut like he’s in pain. The mystery walker stops just short of the
door, then waits there as though he is listening too. An eternity seems to pass
before finally, the footsteps slowly draw away, growing fainter, fainter, then
gone at last.
    He finally
lets go of my mouth and whispers his first words: “Are you going to eat me?”
    Not the
sweetest first words I’ve heard. “What?”
    “Are you going
to eat me?” he asks again.
    “Seriously?”
    After studying
my face doubtfully for a while, he seems to relax. “Okay, then.”
    And without
further explanation, he swings open the door and peers outside. Deciding the
coast is clear I guess, he steps out of the bathroom. When I reluctantly
follow, I find the tavern littered with skulls and bones of the bodies it once
peacefully occupied. None of them stir. This must be part of the big pretend-scene—the
part where they all lay in a mess, knocked out by one bottle or