I sit in the courtyard garden with Tabby in my lap. The tulips are red-headed traitors, bobbing, with bees in their mouths. The water fountain gargles, froths, sputters. Dragonflies land like skiffs, narrowed down, little harpoons, rotating their oversized heads. It is a quiet afternoon. Death is here with me. He sits on the stone bench across from me, his pants neatly creased, black-suited, young-faced. I have always imagined death to be young-faced. Untouched, hairless. Smiling and accommodating, courteous as a suitor. I let him watch me. I turn my head, stoke Tabby's neck.
I like the attention.
I look up at the sun. It splits a gap-toothed smile through the clouds. Ra, sun god, hear me. Soak me up, sponge me up. Stain through me, numb these bulb-headed nerves of mine, calm these bones, haphazardly knitted together by poor rations of flesh and ligament. I close my eyes. I think about the surface of the sun, whips of nuclear energy curling off of its great head, like manes. Winking, unsleeping. Kernel of the solar system. The planets making their slow procession around it, like ladies-in-waiting.
Ra.
A drop of golden sun.
I look up at the manor, broad-headed regiments of ivy scaling it, overlooking the valley like a bored king. I think about how many hands it took to build it. How many bricks stacked. How many drops of sweat. Great towers rising, archways, porticoes, rotundas. Chisels and nails. Or is it cranes and jackhammers? Was it built in a month, or over a lifetime? The sole life-purpose of a nation of foreign-tongued slaves.
It is no pyramid.
I am no pharaoh.
The tulips seem to close up as the sun disappears behind a cloud, puckering like lips.
The servants will be here soon.
*
In the darkness, death is not my companion. At least, not the clean-shaven, neat-suited death that lives with me in the courtyard gardens. In the dark, it is Anubis who sits beside me. Jackal-headed, ministering. He bends over me. I can smell his breath. It smells of a thousand years of sand-washed stone. It smells of a thousand years of pent-up air. His heartbeat is the murmur of the Nile.
The dry season.
The flood season.
He comes with a soft hand in the dark.
He speaks unknown, smooth syllables. He speak of ba and ka and akh and the way the sun feels between your shoulderblades on a hot day. He waits patiently, regarding me like some special specimen, jarred, preserved. But, O lord, I can feel this skin peeling away, like birchbark paper. I am being undone, slowly. The yarn of my breath. I am opened, like a long-expected letter . I taste the dust. I taste each of the thousand years of Nile silt in my mouth.
Anubis. Dark-headed companion, attending to me.
He waits.
*
The servants come down the rise and into the garden, two by two. The maids frilled and cuffed. Butler with his polished shoes and curling lower lip. The chauffeur and the caretaker. The cook with his cap, rising and secretive as a nighttime mushroom.
The flowers sigh like ladies undoing their corsets.
The cook is carrying the platter of wineglasses. I have called them here to propose a toast. Tabby purrs into my belly. I can feel her small, lobed heart betraying, and mine thumping jealously, trudgingly. I offer them to sit on the stone benches around me. I point to the one with death on it. He lingers there like a grudge. His smile wavering. The chauffeur and the maid sit on that bench.
“Joseph, why don't you pass out the wine,” I say.
My voice is feeble.
They all watch me carefully.
The bees mumble around us, dusting like sandmen among the drowsing blossoms.
Joseph, the cook, serves the wine. I swirl mine thoughtfully, red tongues. Red skirts.
“It's a beautiful day, isn't it?”
Anubis is here now. Looming, monolithic forehead. Snouted, arms folded. Patient as ever in his moment.
I chose my words, working them over in my mouth. “I'm sick and I'm tired. You all know that. I'm a leftover. Godssakes, I'm going so quick, death can barely keep up with me.”
I smile. They smile.
They are silent and waxy-faced as still-life fruit.
I say, “What's the rush? Slow down. Smell the tulips.”
He will begin with my belly, cutting it open. Storing each of my internal organs – lungs, liver, intestines – in canopic jars, squat and decided as toes. Shove a hook up my nose, stir my gray matter to soup and drain it out my nostrils. He will seal me up.
“I've called you here to celebrate a special occasion. I will be dying very soon. It is my own decision. It is not the estimation of a doctor. It is not my tired body giving out. It is by my own hand and will. I am ready for the next world. I am ready to take my place.”
Pack me in salt. Wrap me in careful, mute bandages. I will become dry and dusty, like some lunar surface. My eyes will retract in their sockets, like shy snails.
I swirl the wine.
“To take my throne.”
Tabby purrs.
They are silent.
I raise my glass.
“A toast. A toast to the world to come.”
They steal sideways looks at each other – godssakes, let's hope so – and they drink up.
In the next life, in the afterlife. Where soul meets body. It is one long continuation. Riding on the backs of fallen dominoes. I look up to Anubis, standing among the tulips with their unfaithful lips. He is large, vindicated. A thousand years of dust. I can taste it on my lips.
I have such thirst.
*
Alexandria, a maid, dies first. The glass slips from her grasp, the wine slopping over the rim like a french kiss, and shatters on the ground. She falls to her face before me. The others follow one by one, dropping their glasses first – a delicate percussion. The poison foams on their lips. The wine in their throats. Their faces pink and resonant as conch shells. Joseph the cook falls last, licking his lips, cow-heavy. I take a deep breath. They are arranged, prostrated like worshippers.
To serve me in the world to come.
I look up at the bald face of Ra, bestowing his drops of golden sun, and then I take Tabby's paperweight head in my head and twist it like a wind-up toy. Neck snapping. Uncording vertebrates, her heart stopping warmly, settling. There is utter peace now. Just me and Anubis.
Don't worry, I say to them all. I'm doing us all a favor.
The last pharaoh – I like the thought.
Anubis kneels beside me, night-hooded guardsman. Gatekeeper to the otherworld. He inclines his head.
And I take a good long drink of the wine, feeling the poison working through my veins, bringing up a lovely sleep, raising it up from long awaited catacombs.
*
I follow them down.
I follow my servants down.
It's not my fault. Well, it is, really. Anyway.
But yeah. I hope that made sense. Great style, great idea - just refine.