Odd Hours

reason to scam you, sir. He’s really your buddy.”
    The redhead disproved my contention by shooting Hoss Shackett in the head.
    I let out an expletive that seemed to have come from the people I had been associating with, not from me, and I staggered back from the dead and toppling chief. Staggering, I fell; and falling, I fell upon the minister’s dead wife.
    I heard myself spewing exclamations of disgust and horror as I tried to get off the dead woman, but it seemed as though she grabbed at me, clutched me, and by the time I crawled away from her on my hands and knees, I was gibbering like someone who had barely escaped the House of Usher or any other place of Poe’s creation.
    “Get up,” said the redhead.
    “I’m trying.”
    “What’s wrong with you?” he asked.
    “What’s wrong with me?”
    “Are you spastic?”
    “Are you blind ?”
    “Don’t speak harshly to me,” he said.
    “Do you see all these dead people?”
    “Do they bother you—dead people?”
    “You have no idea,” I said.
    “They are just people, except dead.”
    “What—then I’m just a corpse, except alive?”
    His smile was ghastly. “Yes, precisely.”
    I had invented a neat organizational chart for these people. The redheads were bottom-feeders. Utgard was middle management. Shackett was at or near the top. If I ever hosted a dinner party, I assumed I knew exactly how they should be seated.
    Instead, this redhead’s attitude suggested that he not only had the temerity to whack the chief but also the authority. His rotten teeth seemed not to be proof of low status, after all, but perhaps a fashion choice.
    “Do you have to point that gun at my head?”
    “Would you prefer I point it at your chest?”
    “Yes. In fact, yes.”
    “You’ll be just as dead either way.”
    “But I’ll be a prettier dead this way.”
    “It’s loaded with door-busters.”
    “If you’re going to kill me, just do it.”
    “I didn’t say I was going to kill you.”
    “You’re not going to kill me?”
    “Most likely, yes. But one never knows.”
    “What do you want from me?” I demanded.
    “First, I want to talk to you.”
    “This never works out well.”
    “Have a seat.”
    “What— here ?”
    “On the sofa.”
    “I can’t talk with dead people.”
    “They will not interrupt.”
    “I’m serious about this. I’m freaked out.”
    “Don’t speak harshly to me,” he said.
    “Well, you just don’t listen.”
    “That is unfair. I listen. I’m a good listener.”
    “You haven’t been listening to me .”
    “You sound just like my wife.”
    This was interesting.
    “You have a wife?”
    “I adore her.”
    “What’s her name?”
    “Do not laugh when I tell you.”
    “I am in no mood to laugh, sir.”
    He watched me closely for signs of amusement.
    The gun had a large bore. It probably would bust doors.
    “Her name is Freddie.”
    “Why, that’s delightful.”
    “Delightful like funny?”
    “No, delightful like charming.”
    “She is not a masculine woman.”
    “The name implies no such thing,” I assured him.
    “She is entirely feminine.”
    “Freddie is a nickname for Frederica.”
    He stared at me, processing what I had said.
    “Are you sure about this?” he asked.
    “Absolutely. Frederica, Freddie.”
    “Frederica is a nice feminine name.”
    “Exactly my point,” I said.
    “But her parents only named her Freddie.”
    I shrugged. “Parents. What’re you gonna do?”
    He stared at me for a long moment.
    I tried not to study his teeth.
    Finally he said, “Perhaps we can talk in the kitchen.”
    “Have you left any dead people in the kitchen?”
    “I could find no one there to kill.”
    “Then the kitchen will be fine,” I said.

 
    FORTY-SEVEN
    THE REDHEAD AND I SAT ACROSS FROM EACH other at the kitchen table. He still pointed the gun at me, but less aggressively.
    He indicated the decorative magnets on the refrigerator door. “What does that one mean—‘I complained I had no shoes, till I met a man with no feet.’”
    “You’ve got me. I’m sure Reverend Moran had all the shoes he wanted.”
    “Why would a man have no feet?”
    “I guess someone cut them off.”
    “That will happen,” he said. “Moran always annoyed me, I never saw him in this.”
    “How did he fit?” I asked. “Minister. Church. Jesus. Nuclear terrorism. I don’t get it.”
    “He was I-I-G-O,” said the redhead.
    “He was igo?”
    “International Interdenominational Goodwill Organization. He