Saving Elijah

fingertips. I touch his fingers, his feet, his toes, and I stay with him long after his skin has turned cold, fighting to remember his smell. There was once a time when he smelled like a little boy, not like this. I can't even conjure up the memory of that.
    Sam touches my arm. I know he is trying to offer solace, but he cannot. No one can. To all would-be comforters I retort: I am a clobbered egg, ex-orb exploded, white shard in your eye. It hurts, there there. This once perfect sweet rot threaded with bloodeous black. Glutinous maximus, dripping all over the imported linen, sticky on the gold-rimmed china. Soiled with eight years of the grotesque, now with the muck of my child's grave. There with my child, so cold. I sweat this stuff in your face, placid and complacent as a baby's toes. I yield up nothing you want. No angel wings, no down for your bed, no meat.

    *    *    *

    I was vacuum-zipped and whisked back into the circle in front of the hospital, where the ghost stood puffing on a cigarette, a rolling IV pole standing at his shoulder like a guard. He was wearing his patient getup: speckled hospital gown, black leather jacket over it, and mud-caked boots. Those stick-thin legs seemed made of something aeons old and rubbed smooth. And every exposed inch of skin, from brooding brow to pink knees, was tinged with mold.
    "Have drip, will travel." He smirked, glanced at the site where the IV tube disappeared in the sleeve of his jacket. He inhaled on his cigarette, then waved it toward mine. "We're the last of a dying breed. Ha. Ha. Ha." He threw it on the ground, where it disappeared.
    I threw my own cigarette down and ground it out.
    A flame flared from his finger, and he used it to light another cigarette. "Without me," he said, "Elijah's a goner, you know. You might as well face it. Years of visits to that place, you a martyr, the suffering saint. Then, like I said, the eternal dirt nap. The house of perpetual un-motion."
    I was trying to think, but my mind was a fog, and he was way ahead of me.
    "On the other hand, such a good little guy, such an innocent little guy. He'll surely be sitting at the right hand of God for all eternity after he dies. Maybe you should just tell me to take a hike."
    "No."
    "Then let him die."
    "No. I want him with me."
    He crossed his arms, and I could see things moving, squirming in the sallow pink liquid in the IV tube. "You want to deprive him of the chance to be with God? And for such a selfish reason, just so you can keep him with you?" He made a tsk tsk sound. "I'd say that was very cruel."
    "How do you know he's going to die? How can anyone know?"
    "Everyone knows, except you. Despite my best efforts." He said it loudly, so loudly, and his voice did drown out the roar of a God I could no longer even listen for. "Did you get a load of that EEG? You think someone's home in there?"
    I stood there and I looked at him and I forced myself to speak the words at last.
    "Yes," I said. "Help me. Please help me."
    He smiled and I could see his teeth, the blackness in his ghost mouth.
    "Well, now. There's a good girl. Now let me see. Changing the name of the doomed can sometimes fool the Angel. But things are pretty far gone for that kind of simple trick."
    "So you can't help me?"
    "Beg." He pointed to the ground. "On your knees."
    "Please."
    "Okay, fine, we'll do it without begging." He was like a petulant child, my ghost. "Of course, there is a catch, as I've told you. Just a slight one, to be sure."
    "But you said—"
    "We've been talking about you. All this time, we haven't said squat about me. It's really quite simple. A simple bargain. If I make sure the Angel of Death can't find your son, you have to let me inside you."
    "What?"
    He started to laugh. "What a dirty little mind you have. All I want is just a little warmth. I'm so cold all the time. That's all."
    "That's all?"
    "Nothing to it. I'm not so bad, really, once you get to know me."
    "For how long?"
    "Forever, of course."
    "Inside me? What does that mean?"
    "What do you think it means?" He crossed several arms over his chest.
    I tried to imagine it. Could not. "What will it feel like, with you inside me?"
    "Look. Do you want your son to wake up, or do you want vegetable city?"
    "What about my other children?"
    The ghost cocked his head. "What about them?"
    "All my children would have to be safe."
    He stamped his foot. "I hardly think you're in any position to start setting conditions. Look, we're not talking