Deathday Club - part 1

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."

1 Corinthians 15: 54

    I stand in front of a window display. I remember a time when purple was the new lime, which was the new red, which was the new black. Black's made a comeback, with the intent that it won't be replaced soon nor easily. The evidence of which isn’t what I’m immediately looking at, but is rather in the peripherals behind the display. The display itself is instead a vomit of celebratory colors. I almost chuckle at my own wit: if you combined all these hues, combined their voices into one, it would create black.
    Others stream behind me, passing by and buying. Some glance at the exhibition of jubilation. Their eyes completely skip over me. I'm not here. The sun soars west beyond an interruption of clouds while the breeze floats east. The traffic light ignites into green. The river of cars instantly changes its current.
    Be alive, get moving. Everything else is. Not everything that moves is alive, but I'm beginning to think, in a dulled world, the one thing that glitters must be gold. I don't feel like that thing, and I don't feel like moving.

 I've lost my job, which makes me a loser even the technical sense. A terrible thing, most would suspect. I no longer have the privilege of making a living by doing whatever someone in a nicer tie than mine tells me to. Oh wait, that sounds like the majority of my past, recent present, and inevitable future. Can something be terrible, or good for that matter, if it doesn't change anything? No, it's neutral, isn't it? Complete neutrality. This isn't a world of yin and yang, of balance, and creation versus destruction. It's just neutral, and therefore, there aren't things like life and death anymore. Nothing truly changes for better or worse. Gray must be the new black.
    There’s that song by David Bowie, Changes. I used to think at the end of the chorus he was saying “Time may change me, but I can’t change time.” As it turns out, he’s saying he can’t trace time, but that’s never been what I was interested in. Time’s fallen asleep on the job and has stopped changing me, us. If I could change time, my time, my time on this earth, what else could I change? Maybe yin and yang and those others things would come back.
    Such deep thoughts. All because I happened across the special this display is advertising: A birthday special. My birthday is coming up. Now for the big question: do I join up and get $5 off a $50 purchase on my birthday, plus many more deals for throughout the year?
    “Excuse me, sir. I noticed you perusing the benefits of our club membership for some time. Do you have any questions you would like me to answer?” a woman asks me. Her hair is shoulder length and auburn. The white lab coat and horn rimmed glasses raise her IQ, thus making her persona a super model with a degree. I can’t blame her for having a day job, these are tough economic times, even for models. She must work in the cosmetics section.
    “You have all the answers?” I ask in a joking manner.
    She smiles, humoring me. “I have a lot of answers.”
    “Say I get a membership card for your esteemed department store. At whose expense is the $5 off of the $50 purchase?”
    Her head tilts slightly as she answers me, “Just the company as a whole. It doesn’t affect individual employees.”
    “So, it’s my gain at no one’s expense.”
    “That’s right. It’s the same with any store promotion.”
    I refute her, feeling ornery despite my previous conviction that my termination wasn’t a terrible turn of events. “That’s not quite right. It’s my expense and the company’s gain. Excuse me, I should be moving along.”
    I treasure one last glance at her before turning to walk away. She is that pretty. I only make it a step before I feel this soft grip on my left shoulder.
    “Wait,” she calls out. “I think I know what you would be interested in.”
    I have to stop. When I look at her again, she seems different somehow. As if the coat and glasses weren’t just a costume, as if they were the woman’s own possessions and physical manifestations of her personality: shrewd, sharp, someone whom you don’t wish to thwart.
    “Would you mind coming with me, sir?” she asks pleasantly in a slightly lower, fuller tone than before.
    “I’m in something of a hurry, miss,” I reply. I didn’t want to speak the truth that I had nowhere to be, no purpose for the direction I was walking in.
    “Bluffing only works when you’re the only one who knows it. Listen, I’m actually on the way to my second job. My second job, which just happens to have the same uniform as my first. Will you come with me to my office?”
    I raise an uncertain eyebrow. “Your office? What does your office do?”
    “Change lives.”
    “For what price?”
    “I guarantee you can afford it.”
    “Let me think about it.”
    “I’ll let you think about it on the way,” she deftly crosses her arms.
    I shrug. Who am I to resist a beautiful woman? I’m just a recently unemployed nobody.
    “Sounds good,” I say. It does sound good, but I’m skeptical as ever. If this turns out to be an opportunity to rob me blind, or perhaps to cut out my kidneys, I’ll deal with it when the time comes.
    “Great!” she exclaims, inexplicably perky. “Come with me, then.” She links her arm with mine. For a while I can pretend I successfully endeared a woman to myself through my charm, wit and assets. Even the other pedestrians seem surprised at my good fortune.
--
    “Here we are,” she sings to me.
    I look at her, at the front door, and back at her again. “You brought me here to steal my kidneys, didn’t you?”
    The door to her “office” was literally in an alley. An alley. The brick is cracked, crumbling and stained the color of all sorts of things that I don’t want to think about. One inhalation let me know this must also be somebody’s lavatory. A plaque sat above the door as if it were placed there in a hurry and then forgotten about. It read: “DDC Office.”
    Felicity, or such is the name that she told me on the way, opened the door and graciously waved me in. During our stroll to this “establishment” we had only exchanged names and made small talk. On what her office did I still knew nothing about.
    The interior is considerably nicer, albeit cramped. It is just one room, one closet, one leather couch and one desk between two armchairs. A potted plant stands sentry in the corner and a painted beach scene drapes the wall behind the desk. Felicity takes her seat, crosses her legs and gestures for me to do the same. I oblige, also crossing my legs as best I can.
    “You have a want,” she states, clasping her hands and pointing the index fingers toward me. She reminds me of a psychiatrist, a psychiatrist I wouldn’t mind being analyzed by. “How about you share it with me?”
    “A job?” I ask, making it evident I don’t know what she wants me to say.
    “More than that,” she presses.
    “A job I enjoy?” I send back to her.
    She asks me not unkindly, “How about a life?”
    “Are you saying I need to get a life?” I ask, trying my best to sound miffed. Really I’m just unhappy that I can’t truthfully deny it.
    Felicity claps her hands and she takes off her glasses. Gorgeous hazel eyes; I’m nearly distracted from what she says next. “Yes! And what better way to find your life again than by eliminating the fear of death?”
    “Wait- what?” I uncross my legs and lean forward on my knees. “One: I’m not going to join a cult. And two: I’m not going to undergo your ‘psychotherapy.’”
    “None of the above,” she sings again and takes out a pen from her front pocket to twirl it. She puts her glasses back on, this time letting them slip to the end of her nose so she can look at me like a teacher who knows what her troublesome student is up to.
    “You’re afraid, my dear Mr. Vaughn. You want change, but you’re ultimately afraid of that ultimate change: death. You read the news and watch the T.V. New incurable diseases are springing up every month, major companies are going bankrupt, and our country is being drawn into another war. It immobilizes you, paralyzing your ambitions and causing you to hide in a cave of your own mediocrity. But death spares no one, no matter how great or pathetic. Stop hiding from it. Acknowledge death and then you’ll be able to live in the face of it. Admit the yang, and you’ll find your yin.”
    My face pales at her mention of yin and yang. And not just that, everything she said...has she been reading my mind? I don’t feel like I’m sitting with a cosmetologist, and I’m unnerved by it.
    Blinking several times in rapid succession I ask, “What are you selling?”
    She smiles, capturing my eyes. “I’m not actually selling anything. I won’t bore you with the logistics of it, but I’m proposing that you become a member of a very exclusive club. The cost is, well, not exactly monetary. But the benefits are out of this world.”
    I grip the armrests and throw myself into a stand. I say robotically, “I just remembered, I’m unemployed. I should go out now and change that.”
    “Wait!” Felicity’s voice reverberates around the room. She is standing and reaches across the desk for my forearm with her right hand. “What would you do, if you knew you were invincible?”
    It takes me a minute to say something. Just once, in my whole experience with this woman, I want to provide an answer besides that which I gave when she asked for my name. “I would race cars. Underground.”
    Now with both hands clinging onto my forearm, she asks, “What would you do, if you knew you had two years to live?”
    This answer takes less time. “If I were more or less in good enough health? I’d race cars.”
    “What would you do, if both were true?” she asks deliberately.
    I furrow my brow, unsettled by the contact between us. “If I were invincible and had two years to live?” Felicity nods. “I’d....race cars.”