Deaths Excellent Vacation

station wagon is totaled. Buckled up on itself like an accordion. So they get out their power saws and pry bars. Work off the doors. Cut open the roof.”
    “Are the girls all dead?” asked Kimberly.
    “No, they’re rushed to the hospital. All seven of them.”
    “They didn’t die and turn into ghosts?” Kimberly whined. “I thought this was supposed to be a ghost story.”
    “It is. Hang on.”
    Donna scooched closer to Kevin. Kimberly wrapped her arms around Jerry’s neck. Brenda fired up two fresh Dorals at the same time. A double-barreled shotgun. Offered one to me.
    “Thanks.” I took it. They were getting easier and easier, milder and milder. I took a puff and let the Doral do its stuff.
    “Anyways,” Kevin continues, “after they run the girls to the hospital, all the ambulance crews are hanging out in the ER parking lot, shooting the breeze. Uncle Rocco asks some guys from the other volunteer squads how they found the wreck. Most bust his chops; say they used a frigging map. One or two, though, one or two say this old black dude walked out of the shadows and told them where to go. Black guy in glasses with a goatee. ‘We couldn’t see his breath,’ says this one paramedic from another town near Montclair. ‘What?’ my uncle asks. ‘It’s freaking cold out,’ says the other rescue worker. ‘My breath was steaming out of my mouth, but this black guy? You couldn’t see no breath.’ My uncle suddenly remembers: He couldn’t see the black dude’s breath, either!”
    Donna is too scared to gasp again. So she shivers. Her teeth chatter.
    “A week later,” Kevin continues, “Uncle Rocco goes to visit the girls in the hospital, wants to see how they’re doing. They’re all fine. One of the girls, though, is black, and she’s got stuffed animals and flowers and a couple of framed pictures propped up on her bedside table there. ‘Who’s that?’ my uncle asks, pointing at one of the pictures. ‘My grandpa,’ says the girl. ‘He died last November.’ And the guy in the picture? Dig this: He’s wearing wire-rimmed glasses, a goatee, and a tweed sport coat. Just like the black dude with the invisible breath. To this day, Uncle Rocco swears it was the girl’s grandfather who told them how to find that wreck! The old man came back from the dead so his granddaughter wouldn’t have to die, too! He was like her guardian angel!”
    Nobody said anything for about ten seconds.
    The fire popped and crackled.
    “That’s freaky,” whispered Donna. She hugged herself. I could see whole patches of goose bumps sprouting on her arms.
    “You cold?” Kevin, ever the gentleman, offered her his leisure suit jacket.
    “I know a better way to warm up.” She took Kevin’s hand. “You ever done it in the dunes?”
    “Not with a fox like you!” Kevin grabbed a fresh six-pack and a beach blanket. The two of them headed for the privacy on the other side of the sand mounds.
    Meanwhile, the totally trashed Kimberly, teetering in Jerry’s lap, was so stoned she had become fixated on the glowing tracers trailing behind the bright red embers drifting up inside the fire’s curling smoke.
    “You know,” said Jerry, seizing the moment, “if you were the new burger at McDonald’s, you’d be the McGorgeous.”
    “Shut up,” said Kimberly, stumbling up, noisily slapping some sand off her bikini-bottomed butt. Then she burped. “Let’s go screw.”
    And they left us, too.
    Brenda Narramore and I were all alone.
    We silently smoked more of her Dorals. She twirled off the plastic wrap on a second pack. The sand around us started to resemble one of those ashtrays near the elevators at a fancy hotel. Stubbed-out butts stood at attention like tiny tombstones all around us. My chest ached.
    About two cigarettes later, I heard soft moans rise over the dunes to the east.
    I gestured toward her beach bag. “You bring a good book? We might be stuck here awhile.”
    She dug into the canvas sack. “Yeah.”
    I recognized the burgundy cover: The Catcher in the Rye.
    “Good book,” I said.
    “You’ve read it?”
    “Hasn’t everybody?”
    “Not Donna and Kim.”
    I nodded. Fiddled with the label on the Boone’s Farm wine bottle. “I read it when I was like twelve, I think.”
    Brenda slid her glasses up her nose. “I actually like books more than boys. Sorry, David, but, most of the time, there’s more going on between the covers of a good book than between most men’s ears.”
    I nodded again.