THIRTY

When we got back, I'd managed to put a few of my problems behind me to rave about the Lifetime Special du jour. Since I wasn't having sex, and since I didn't have a plan, and since there was a zombie creeping around, I was watching an unusual amount of television this month.

"Okay, so then-check this-the heroine does this-"

"But I hate Rene Russo," Jess complained while I lugged bag after bag into the kitchen. "She was the least interesting thing in Outbreak. The monkey was a thousand times more interesting and it didn't have to emote. And when her character got sick, okay, everyone else who caught it, they're all bleeding out their ears and eyes, but she just sort of gets a mild flush. That's how you knew Rene Russo had the deadly plague. They put more blush on her."

"You'll like her in this, I bet. She did this remarkable thing. The killer called her and tried to get her to meet him, alone, and the only witness to his hideous unspeakable crime refused to do it."

"What?"

I was unloading bags, stacking cans and frozen birds and boxes of Stove Top on the counter. "Yeah. She wouldn't take off without a word to anyone to meet with the killer at midnight in the middle of a cornfield. Unprecedented! And then, when the killer tried to reschedule, she turned him down again. Yes!"

"That does sound kind of cool," Jess admitted.

"This time, though, she refused to leave the safety of her living room to meet up with a shady guy in an abandoned office building by a wharf where all the streetlights had been broken out. She said no. And she lived to testify! Unprecedented! So, yeah, I wanna reward that behavior. I'm renting everything Rene Russo ever touched."

"You're watching an unusual amount of TV these days."

"My thought exactly!"

"Remember your Denzel marathon?"

"One movie isn't a marathon," I corrected her, but I did remember. It was the day after Marc had killed himself, so I'd had to watch the movie three times in a row before I could even think about trying to do anything else: Feed. Cry. Rage. Think.

* * *

"I don't need Dead Man Walking; I need Man on Fire."

"When was the last time you slept?" Jessica asked quietly.

I ignored her, sorting through the DVDs. I needed the movie, not the book. The book was almost as much of a downer as DMW, which didn't mean it was a bad book, just one I wouldn't read twice. And not now, of all times.

The movie version, though: totally different story. Denzel Washington's character, Creasy, thought Dakota Fanning's character had been kidnapped (she had been) and murdered (she hadn't been). So he fucked with a bunch of bad guys and blew bad guys up and cut pieces off them and shot a few of them, and then he rescued Dakota Fanning and she got to go home to her mom. Yes, definitely a time to take MoF to heart as opposed to thinking about Sean Penn getting the needle while his nun friend watched helplessly and prayed and cried. "Where is the fucking thing? It was right here last week when Marc was teasing me about-about something else. Where the hell is it?"

"It's-it's here. See? You buried it by accident while you were looking."

"At least that's not a metaphor for anything awful," I muttered. "Are you gonna watch with me?"

"Betsy," my friend said, with an expression on her face that meant she was picking her words with care, "Creasy died at the end. He saved the girl ... and died."

I met her look. "So?"

She had nothing to say to that.

I guess I didn't, either.

"You should be glad I'm catching up on all the movies I never watch, what with dying and all."

"I'm kind of glad," Jess admitted so diffidently I had to smile.

"Movies? Cable television? Really? That's your priority at this time?"

Didn't even have to look. I just shoved cans into random cupboards. "Get bent, Wretched Me."

"For God's sake." Hmm. Nice to see Evil Old Me could still break the third commandment. Wait. Fifth? "I sent Marc back to help you."

"Some help!" I whipped around and glared. "He slunk around and giggled and freaked everybody out and scared our Marc into killing himself. And stop wearing my clothes!"

"Oh my God." Jessica was all big eyes and open mouth. "I'm seeing it and I don't believe it."

"Oh. Yes. Hello." Rude Elderly Me tipped a shallow nod in my (our) best friend's direction. "You're looking round."

I gripped the one can of cranberry jelly I hadn't put away. Right between the eyes ... that ought to put a dent in her day. Not to mention her skull. "You watch how you talk to her, you clothes-grubbing harlot."

"I am here to-never mind why I'm here."

"See?" I said to Jessica, triumphant.

"Yeah, the coy thing is definitely annoying," my beloved brilliant best friend agreed.

"It's not only your turn to pull the freight, it's your damned job. What do you want me to do, tattoo instructions on your forehead?"

"You can't talk to you like that," Jessica scolded.

"You hear but you don't listen. You look but you don't see."

"I fart but don't stink. I shampoo but don't condition. What are you doing here? What am I doing here, you horrible decrepit thing?"

"Whoa," Marc said, shambling in. Okay, maybe not shambling. He walked pretty much like he had in life. I had to work on letting go of my zombie stereotyping. I'd hated the term politically correct long before it was trendy, but I had to get over that, too.

He didn't shamble, he didn't moan "Braaaaaains" while clutching at terrified roommates, he didn't stare vacantly (except when he was watching Drogo's scenes in Game of Thrones, but he'd done that in life, too) or hungrily (see above: only with Game of Thrones). He didn't do any of that stuff. He was a zombie, but he was still Marc. He was still my friend, and I was still his. As someone who resented being painted as a soulless bloodsucking dictator with a silly hard-on for good shoes (it wasn't silly!), you'd think I'd catch on to that stuff a little quicker.

He wasn't a terrifying Pet Sematary zombie ... he didn't come back with demonic baggage. (And I'd thought toddlers were scary before I saw Gage Creed return from the grave.) He wasn't lurch-ey or clumsy; Ancient Me apparently knew her shit when it came to raising the dead-and keeping the dead.

At worst, he could be a speedy zombie. My God! I had hated the Dawn of the Dead remake zombies ... they could run people down like a jaguar after a gazelle! I'd been so, so happy when movies and the TNT network went back to classic, shambling zombies.

"I forgot how much milling around we all did in the past," Ancient Me said, holding her head like she was getting a migraine. "All milling, no action. Until we were pushed to the wall. And then it was often too late."

"Okay, that was almost helpful." I could feel myself perking up. "If you could elaborate just a teensy bit..."

Before she could, a wild-eyed Nickie/Dickie/Tavvi burst through the kitchen door. "You didn't answer my texts!" he cried.

"What texts?" Jessica fished her phone out of her purse, then looked up with a grimace. "Sorry, Dickie."

"Ugh," I muttered.

"Sorry, Dickie, but I didn't know my phone was off." She stuck her tongue out at me. "It's his name. Suck it up."

"So you're okay?" He crossed the room and wrapped his arms around her. As much as he could, anyway. I had to applaud his heroic effort. "Jeez, don't do that. I was shitting bricks."

"Gross," Marc commented.

"Aw, it's cute," I teased. "In a nauseating overprotective and creepy way."

"And you!" The Artist Formerly Known as Nick let go of Jessica's "waist" and whipped around. "This is more or less your fault."

"Well, you're probably right," I admitted, "but I'm not sure why. Or what I can-"

"He's a zombie." Pointing to Marc, who shrugged, embarrassed. "Which is why she's here." Pointing to Ancient Me, who had never looked less interested in a person or what they were saying. "And now Satan is a pop-in guest? Fucking Satan?"

"She's never a guest! I only summoned her once; she almost always shows up on her own. Satan's the worst."

"And he might be skinned. By you!" Nick/Dick looked around the room in confusion before realizing Sinclair wasn't actually in the room. Now that was a frazzled cop. "And Antonia's back from hell, but your stepmother is still dead and in hell."

"Okay, those aren't entirely my fault," I began.

"In our home! Jesus Christ, Betsy, we're trying to have a baby here!"

"We?" Don't look at his groin. Don't look at his groin. Don't mention that he doesn't have a vagina, so "we" is bullshit. This is not the time to mention your pet peeve about expectant fathers talking how "we" are having a baby. Don't. Don't. "Um, sorry?"

"You're always sorry, Betsy, but things just keep getting weirder, don't they?"

"Huh." Ancient Betsy was staring thoughtfully at Dickie/Nickie. "A backbone in both timelines. Interesting."

"You shut up."

"And a moron in both timelines," Ancient Me decided.

"This is on you," he said, pointing to (ulp!) me. "It all comes back to you. It always comes back to you."

"I'm pretty sure I'm the vic-"

"You were always going to go your own way."

"Maybe not always..."

He was in no mood to be coerced or distracted. Just held himself stiffly and stared at me with a gaze so fierce it nearly scorched me. "You were always going to fix things the way you liked them and to hell with the consequences."

"If you think this is how I like it, you're deranged."

"That's why you put it all off."

"Put what off?" I cried. To my annoyance, no one in the room seemed inclined to tiptoe out and leave Dick and me to thrash this out in privacy.

"Burying Marc!"

"Do not drag me into this," Zombie Marc began, but Dick/Nick was not about to be derailed.

"Classic Betsy: stall until something weirder happens, then do your own thing while we're looking the wrong way. You knew you were going to do something and you knew we wouldn't like it."

"Yeah, because that's how brilliant I secretly am. I'm so diabolical I planned for Marc to kill himself in November in Minnesota so his coffin wouldn't get sunk six feet and I could get my other self from a timeline I didn't intend to create to bring him back to life," I snapped. If only I were that diabolical a planner...

"You knew you were gonna do something."

Then I had my "you can't handle the truth" moment: "Okay, yeah. I was, and I knew you wouldn't be able to wrap your head around it. So I promised myself and Sinclair-"

"Sinclair!" he echoed, throwing his arms up like an NFL referee. And ... it's gooooooood! The Packers win the Super Bowl! "Big part of the problem!"

"Don't start, Nick/Dick! I don't bust your balls because of who you sleep with, and I expect the same goddamn courtesy."

"How many times? It's Dick. You're talking about courtesy and you haven't bothered to learn my fucking name."

Ow! He got me. Ignore it. Go for the throat! "So, yeah, I was always going to help Marc, and I was always not going to give a shit if you liked it or not." I managed to stop before, "So what're you gonna do about it, crybaby?"-but it was a near thing.

"My child will live in this house," he said. He sounded like he always did, but his eyes were slits of blue ice. I became morbidly aware of his badge, clipped to his belt, and his gun, which I knew was loaded. "Can you comprehend that, Betsy?"

"I'd never let anything happen to The Baby That Ate the World," I said, shocked. "The fact that you could even raise that as a concern makes me want to shove your teeth all the way down into your testicles."

"See? That's the sort of thing that makes it hard to like you."

"I'm very easy to like, shithead, you just gotta get your thumb out of your ass and see that!" Somehow we'd ended up nose to nose. In our kitchen. And despite accidentally making a timeline where he didn't hate me, he looked ready to draw down on me-and I was willing to bet he was pretty good with that gun in this timeline, too.

So there we were, ready to throw down in the middle of our grimy kitchen tile. With a rapidly thawing Butterball turkey as silent witness to the pre-Thanksgiving fight. Oh, and a bunch of our friends standing around trying not to look at either of us.

"Um ... hi?"

And the Antichrist.

"This looks almost interesting."

And Satan.

"Neh? Buh?"

And BabyJon.

"Surprise! Guess who wanted to see his big sister!"

And my mom.