“We are friends,” I say, and I think about what that means. He came to me first when he thought he was sick. I drove him to the hospital. I heard the diagnosis. Laird stood there calmly questioning the doctor as if he’d just been told that he’d sprained an ankle, while I imagined parasites infected with the virus coursing through his body, withering him away to bone and dust. It was probably from using unboiled water in the nasal irrigation pot you mentioned, the doctor said. At this point, we can only slow the infection.
After his diagnosis, he still visited the body farm every day, free from the financial pressure of needing a steady job due to the inheritance he and his sister received when their mother died. Laird told me that if he was going to die, he wanted his final days to be meaningful. If we needed DNA sequenced, bones cleaned, or even the floor mopped, he was always the first to volunteer.
“You don’t need to do all of this,” I told him after he’d mopped the floors at least twice in one week.
“I want to,” Laird said. “I want to feel like I’m a small part of what you’re all doing here.” We liked to eat lunch together in the break room or at a nearby diner, the kind where they still roll a cart of pies to your table. Sometimes after work, we’d go to a park. We’d play Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit on the grass and listen to music that said something about our lives—this one is senior year; these songs explain junior high, the summer my parents couldn’t stand each other.
Here’s what I’ve learned about Laird from our time together:
He has more broken dreams than realized ones.
He says he doesn’t believe in the supernatural, but once admitted to using a spirit board to contact his mother, and owns tarot cards and books about angels and the afterlife.
He saved up to buy a He-Man Castle Grayskull playset as a kid but never bought a He-Man to defend the castle.
Here’s what Laird knows about me:
My name is Aubrey Lynn Nakatani.
I call my cat Piglet or Bean or Beanicus Caesar.
All of the lies I’ve told Tatsu about work, the reports and criminal cases and graduate student research, when I’m really hanging out with him.
I am obsessed with Key lime pie and ironing all the wrinkles from my clothing.
I sing to my cadavers when I arrange them in the field—eighties new wave, Christmas carols during the holiday season.
He once caught me humming Tom Petty’s “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” as I examined a box full of arms I’d burned the night before in preparation for a grad exam.
“I love that song,” he said. “You know the music video starts off in a morgue.”
We sang the chorus together.
“Why are all of the arms bent except that one?” he asked as I placed each one on the table.
“It’s called the pugilistic pose,” I answered. “The fire makes the muscles in our joints shrink. If we find a limb that isn’t bent, it can be a sign of preburning trauma or restraint. I tied this arm down to a piece of wood.”
What Laird and I have is beyond intimate, in a way.
Orli is clutching the fence with one hand, overlooking our body field, pinching her nostrils with the other. I squeeze her shoulder, attempt to lure her back inside. She’s laser focused on the cadavers, though, the mounds of shallow graves.
“If he does this,” Orli says. “If I allow this, would you write to him?”
“I will.”
Orli nods, briefly releases her nose, and then begins to dry heave. She crouches on the ground. I hold her hair while she spits out the remains of what looks like a salad.
“I’m sorry,” Orli says. She spits again.
“I’ve seen people do far worse here,” I say. Sometimes I’m horrified by how normal this place seems to me. “Let’s move back a bit.” I guide Orli away from the worst of it, farther from the fence.
“The smell isn’t too bad here,” she says.
“Maybe we should go inside,” I say.
Orli shakes her head. We stand there for a long while, watching the shadows of the bodies grow long as the sun falls, the air silent but for the steady hum of blowflies.
Two weeks later, Laird goes off his meds in preparation for what he calls death on his own watch. With what little time remains, he decides to go against his doctor’s orders and take a field trip. He says the fluorescent lights are draining his will to live faster than the virus is. After a couple of days without the treatment, I notice Laird’s energy has dropped, his mind is foggier, as if my words, the songs we listen to are being played in slow motion.