Grady is not in the park at the end of my street when I get there. I know because I literally park my car, walk my butt down there, walk around it – every inch of it – and see no sign of him.
So then I have mental pictures of him lying in his single bed at home, going through brain withdrawals, shaking and sweating with a trash can near his pillow like in one of those Intervention shows, so I get back in the car, brain pate still riding shotgun, and head to his house.
I see the light on in his room in the back, so rather than trying to explain to his Mom why I’m delivering brain pate at 10:30 on a school night, I park a few driveways down and hoof it up to his back window via the neighbor’s yard.
He answers in three taps, sliding up the window with a huge grin on his face, a can of Grandma Mary’s Fussy Feast cat food in his hand, the handle end of a white plastic fork sticking out of his mouth like a toothpick.
“What’s that?” I ask, setting my bag o’ brains on his wide, white windowsill so I can put both hands on my hips and look suitably.
Ticked.
The.
Hell
Off!
“Brains!” he smiles and I have to hush him because his Mom will hear if he doesn’t pipe down a smidge.
“Sorry,” he whispers, acting goofy like that time he scored a half-bottle of rum from his Mom’s liquor cabinet and drank it on the way to meet me in the park at the end of his street. “Brains.”
“Are you… drunk?” I ask, thinking maybe he found the other half of the rum bottle.
“Drunk on BRAINS!” he says, starting with a whisper but ending with a shout.
I look into his room, which always smells like stale pizza boxes and Old Spice, and see several cans of Fussy Feast lying, empty, overturned, scraped clean on the floor next to his easy chair like some drunk on a bender.
“Grady, why are you eating… cat food?”
“Because of the brains,” he says, remembering to whisper this time.
He hands me his latest empty can, shoving his big, cat food covered index finger over the ingredients list.
I take it from his hand with total “eeewwwwwww” face and wipe off a speck of food to read the ingredients list: chicken livers, beef tongue, lamb brain, pork shoulder, salt, glycerine… the list goes on and on.
“There are… brains… in this?” I ask, handing it back.
“Tons!” he says; more like slurs. “Look, it’s like number three on the ingredients list. The lady at the deli said that means there’s a lot of that in there. If it’s so high up. On the list. I mean. On that list there; right… there.”
He still sounds drunk, and I snap, “What lady? At what deli? Grady, I thought we agreed I’d get the brains tonight – VERY discretely, from the very DISCREET and might I add very EXPENSIVE gourmet butcher at the mall. Where I work. And it would look completely natural. Because I WORK there. I never said, ‘Run down to the deli, ask everybody you see for brains and then bring home a ton of cat food.’ I think I’d remember that, right?”
“I knooowwww,” he says, so brain drunk he stretches the word out to six syllables and rolls his eyes about three dozen times. “But I got hungry and couldn’t wait and you were taking so long, Lacy, so… this was the next best thing.”
I sigh.
“Fine, well, did you make a big scene? I mean, the whole point was to keep the whole brain shopping trip on the DL, remember?”
“Yeah,” he says, waving a hand in front of his face and almost smacking my bag off the sill because his hand-eye coordination is so off. “I mean, I had to ask a few people where they kept the brains first, but other than that I—”
“People? How many people? I thought you just talked to the lady at the deli.”
“Well, yeah, the lady at the deli, of course I talked to her because deli lady people always know where the brains are at, right? But first I had to ask the cart guy, then the bag boy, then the cashier – man, she was cute – and finally the assistant manager told me to ask the manager, and he absolutely knew the deli lady would know, so… just like, a dozen people is all I asked about the brains from so… why are you looking at me like that, Lacy? What gives?”
“Wow, that’s awesome Grady,” I grind through gritted teeth, doing a slow boil as my feet sink into the grass outside his bedroom window under the massive weight of my blistering anger. “I can’t imagine you made much of a scene, a 6’2” hunk stumbling around the store asking everyone he meets where to find a pound of brains, not at all.”
He just kind of stands there, dumbly, blinking his big dumb eyes with cat food on his fingers and chin. “You think… you think I’m a hunk?”
I groan and ignore his kissy-face face.
“All right, fine,” I sigh, because even big, dumb and stupid and covered in cat food he’s still my boy and we’re still in this together. “What’s done is done.”
“Yes!” he says, fist-pumping the air like he’s just won a huge track meet. “I knew you’d understand. That’s my girl.”
Only it comes out “Thash my girlth.”
I shake my head, count six empty cans on the floor and see none stacked waiting for me.
“Okay, well, did you save me any?” I ask, already suspecting the answer.
That stumps him.
He looks back, counting the cans with his long, bony, white index finger.
One can.
Two cans.
Three cans; four.
What feels like five minutes later he turns back and says, “Nope, I surely didn’t, and that was wrong of me. I totally get that now, but… here’s the thing—”
“You didn’t save me any brains? Grady, we’re in this together, dude. Forget that you’re the only other zombie for 400 miles – I hope – but you’re my boyfriend for Pete’s sake! I mean, is that good boyfriend behavior?”
“No,” he admits too quickly, “it’s bad boyfriend behavior, no doubt, really bad, but here’s the thing because you never let me finish what the thing was just now: You said you were getting brains at the mall and I can always depend on you so… we’re good.”
“NO, Grady, we’re NOT good. What if I didn’t get the brains at the mall? What if we were busy at Santa’s Workshop and I didn’t have time, or they were too expensive or they were out of brains? What if I was here starving for brains right now, running out of time, and you’ve just eaten the last of them?”
“We’d go get you some more,” he explains brightly, before his face clouds over and he reconsiders. “Oh, wait… I got the last of them, and she said nobody else in town carried them, and the next shipment doesn’t come in until after Christmas so… I sure hope you got some, otherwise you. Are. Screwed!”
I shake my head, furious, and grab the bag before turning to leave.
“What? Why? Where are you going?” he stammers – just before closing the widow and turning to scrape the last ounce of brains from his beloved yellow cat food cans, as if I wasn’t still standing there.
As if I’d… I’d… never been there at all.
The nerve.
Of all the lowdown, dirty, backstabbing undead… jerks!
It’s only by the time I’m halfway home that it hits me: Not only did he eat up all the brains, but that jerk didn’t even invite me in!
* * * * *
Story # 24:
Late