“I have to, don’t I? It’s my fault she got infected in the first place.” He was drunk, too, and he said “firsht plashe.”

“Even if you never love her again?”

He shrugged and took another long drink. “What else has she got? Doesn’t have a job, can’t pay condo fees, her latest boy toy is dead, lost her mind.”

“Her memory, not her mind.” Lily said. “At least she’s hot for you.”

Oswald laughed so hard that he choked and Lily slapped him on the back. Then he said, “Yeah, but she won’t let me cut her like a wife is supposed to. She looks freaked every time I mention it and doesn’t want to taste me, either. That’s okay. It’s my duty to care for her.”

“Oh, poor Oswald, poor, poor Oswald.” She took a drink and handed the bottle back to him.

“It all started because of a stupid, stupid mistake. I met her at a party—that’s the kind of girl she is, always at some party—and she was pretty and fun and how was I to know she’d get infected?”

“You’re so good,” she said as she leaned against him. “So beautiful and good and brilliant. You’re fabulous.”

“You are, too. Why did we meet again like this, Lily? Why weren’t we matched up by the dating service? Because I think you’re the perfect woman.”

“Oswald, let’s have one night together, one night we can remember forever of what should have been.”

I didn’t wait to hear more. I ran from the awful scene.

But I was trapped here, the fence corralling me like an animal, and I ran from the field toward the vineyard, because I needed to get away, and I could climb the side fence and escape without the guards seeing me.

As I crossed a row of grapevines, the horrible specter of my dead boyfriend, Wilcox Spiggott, rose up, arms spread wide, his beyond-the-grave voice rasping, “Milagro!”

seventeen

This Is Your Brain Unplugged

I’d had a very emotionally taxing day, more so than any sensible girl could be expected to handle with grace. So I shouted, “Come on, you evil dead imaginary bastard, just try to eat my brain!”

“Chillax, cutie.”

“You’re a figment of my sick, damaged mind! You’re not real.”

“Ouch. Maybe someone needs a spanking, but give me a kiss first.”

I would face my own hallucination and prove to myself that it was only air. But the phantasm wrapped his coldish arms around me and kissed me on the mouth with his cool, greenish lips and his breath that smelled of … of flowers and tropical rain.

It was the magic kiss from a zombie.

The protective shell of amnesia cracked open like an egg on the edge of a cast-iron skillet, memory spilling out and sizzling on the scorching surface.