Roland
ROLAND
W ell, I hope he’s not dead. Partly because I don’t want to share my home with another ghost, especially such a nebbish one. Although if I woke up here in Malibu, Adam’s spirit would probably return to whatever rent-controlled Tri-state area dump he came from. He looks like someone who sleeps near his stove.
When I look more closely at the man lying on my floor, I see the throbbing of a pulse in his neck. I thought about replacing him just a few minutes ago, but I am glad he’s still here. There’s a reason I chose him.
I wasn’t expecting him to be a ticket to total ecstasy, though. That was a surprise. If I have those orgasmic visions every time he eats near me, this is going to be a more enjoyable month than I was expecting. Piloting my pool vacuum can only bring so much joy, but Adam’s visit gives me a chance to experiment with whatever happened earlier: Was that a one-off? Or will I be overcome with pleasure every time he so much as eats a Saltine cracker? If it’s the latter, being a ghost isn’t so bad after all. I’d certainly get to experience more satisfaction than I did when I was alive.
“Adam?” I call out through the island speaker, but without arms to jostle him awake, I can only do so much.
This part was always going to be messy, no matter what I planned. The ancient Timex was a stroke of luck. When this is over, I’ll let him keep one of my Montblancs, even though it won’t match his Gap-circa-2008 wardrobe.
I gave my dad a nice watch once, when I went home for Christmas between the first and second seasons of Life or Death . I had just had my first taste of real money, and all I knew was that Rolexes were expensive; my palette for the finer things hadn’t matured yet. Mostly, I wanted to show him how successful I had become. All those silly costumes I wore in school had led to something big—a budding fortune that would pay off the rest of his mortgage before too long, though he didn’t realize it at the time. He still resented me for dropping out of Emory, a school I went to on his dime, to pursue something so silly as acting.
He was unimpressed with the gesture. “This isn’t how I imagined you’d become a doctor, son,” he told me, trying to pass it off as a joke. But it wasn’t. Not really.
Adam snorts and starts a bit, but then returns to his slumber. If he believes me— when he believes me—that’s the kind of stuff I’ll tell him. The story I’ve presented to the public so far brushes over a lot of things. Better to let people think I emerged from the ether fully formed than to spell out all the details. But Adam can fill in those gaps. He can tell readers I was a sensitive child, a classic mama’s boy who went on to have millions of adoring fans but who never got approval from the one person it would have meant something from: his dad. That will play, right? That will prove that Roland Rogers had a rich inner life.
When Adam wakes up, I’ll tell him about being an only child and all the rest of it. But I suspect I’ve got more persuading to do first. So, as he sleeps, I pass the time thinking about the different ways I can try to convince him: I could tell him to disconnect my computer from the internet and then write messages to him in a blank document.
I could make the oven beep in Morse code.
I could play a song on the doorbell.
I could make the blender do “Shave and a Haircut.”