Dead Eli
by Nicole Tsuno
The first person I date after my husband asks to open up our marriage is dead. Dead Eli, his profile reads. Declared legally deceased by the Social Security Administration, but very much alive ;). In his picture, he cradles a dog, a pop-eyed, toilet brush of a thing, so I swipe right.
The book calls it the new monogamous agreement, this contract that allows my husband to spend two nights a week fucking his girlfriends. There’s no proof but I can imagine it, fingers curled into necks, shuddering into shoulders. One of his girlfriends even showed up to our house, shoeless, braids crowning her head, holding wildflowers coned by butcher paper. “I really admire your husband,” she said, offering them to me.
A few hours before my date, I select the dress I wore on our first wedding anniversary, the one with a slice of skin that ends mid-stomach. I hope my husband notices this betrayal and when he doesn’t, I rehang the camel trench I had planned to pair with it. He sits on the bed, butterscotch bathrobe gaping open. He says he’s always wanted to experience compersion and wants me to witness his, pressing himself into me. He grins as he follows me out the door, spinning my shoulders around and using a finger to document my lips. “You look beautiful,” he says. “Have so much fun.”
Dead Eli and I plan to meet up in a park named for a war, its central feature a steely general decorated by pigeon shit. Around it are four plots of pale grass sharpened by summer. On a bench, I gather my hands in my lap, my painted lips drawn back, readied for smile.
Dead Eli is twenty minutes late but doesn’t seem to notice. He wears a sleeveless jersey and the type of rubbery shoes whose soles give hallways a voice. Before I stand completely, he lassoes me into a side hug. “Ready to go?”
He’d been a living dead person for three years, he tells me, but only became aware of it eight months ago, when he filed his taxes for the first time.
“But since the SSA declared me deceased, I can’t file taxes. Told me they’d have to resurrect me first. Can you believe that’s the legal term?”
I can’t, so I play along. “So what, you just don’t pay taxes?”
“Well, they still take it out of my paycheck. I just don’t get the return.”
“That sounds like the worst deal then.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
He leads me through a drive-through, my heels already purpling against the straps. We press ourselves to the wall until we’re at the microphone, backs to angry voices dampened by car windows. As we wait, Dead Eli tells me about the restaurants he would take me to if we had the resources. He assumes I have no money and I don’t correct him. I don’t tell him that part of the new monogamous agreement is a budget that allots $75 per date.
Five minutes later, we approach the window. We’re close enough to hear the spit of the fryer. The worker places two bags on the ledge, mooned by grease.
“Do you have a chase policy?” Dead Eli asks, rooting his hand around in one bag. A second later, a round of limp lettuce slaps the ground.
The worker shakes her head. “We make minimum wage.”
“Thanks,” Dead Eli replies, hanging the bags low by his sides. “Have a nice day.”
He unpacks the bags as we walk, offering me things he has already bitten into. Now that he’s dead, he explains, he thinks about death a lot. He contemplates it in a detached manner only a living dead person could. He walks along the seam between sidewalk and street, passing cars billowing his shirt. He asserts that spoiled milk and goat yoga are FastPasses to Jesus, that pulling the plug is kind of like factory resetting your life without the reboot. I don’t disagree.
“Your turn now,” he says, after a beat.
I tell him I’m trying to find the root cause of my jealousy. “I think I developed a core belief of being unwanted in childhood,” I say.
Dead Eli nods sympathetically. “Must be hard to be alive.”
He hops back onto the sidewalk and falls into stride with me. In a different park, he folds my arms into themselves, pocketing me into his chest. As he kisses me through the last of the chicken nuggets, he tells me that if he weren’t dead, he might make me feel wanted.
I think of my husband on our porch drawing smoke into his lungs, the urgent way he touched me now that I’m not only his. I take our empty bags to the trash and ask Dead Eli if he wants to go back to his place. He declines, says he lives with his parents and doesn’t want to wake up with fewer reproductive organs than he went to sleep with.
He prompts me with a quirk of an eyebrow and I lie down in an alcove, draw my dress up above my knees. Protection is part of the agreement and I’m glad when he produces it without encouragement. His hair winds back and forth above as he toggles it on.
Dead Eli breathes into the space above me, his forehead hemmed in sweat, face sucked sweet like a lozenge. I rotate my vision, on watch for shadows cast on the ground beside me. He moves to hold my wrists above my head, anchoring me to the experience.
“Can I tell you a secret?” he asks when we’re done, and continues before I answer. “A couple of months ago, I got resurrected.”
“Congrats.”
“Are you mad?” He rubs my arm, seeking. “I’m sorry. It’s just fun to be somebody’s first, even if it means I have to be dead.”
My face breaks and I can see it happening in his expression. “Oh shit. I’m sorry. What did I say?”
Nicole Tsuno has never been declared legally deceased and credits Jeff Athey (@notdeadjeff) for teaching her everything she knows about it. She is a chronically ill writer living near Seattle, Washington. Find her on Twitter @nicoletsuno.
