the nine lives of allen grey
1.
The ninth is a suicide. Again. Jumped off a roof and plummeted to his death.
No relatives, no friends, nothing. They cremate his body and send the ashes to a landfill on Jupiter.
There's no such thing as second chances for suicides.
2.
Allen dies at seven-thirty in the morning. They bring him back at twelve, noon. He can't remember a thing — violent deaths rarely do. Scrunching himself up in a corner of the room, he watches them mop his blood off of the hardwood floor. He refuses to talk to the paramedics. At last, they move on; he's only one man and there are, after all, twelve hours still left in the day.
A doctor stays behind.
"Your name is Allen Grey," she tells him, kneeling.
"I didn't forget everything," he snaps.
"You were murdered." Her tone is gentle, as if he is a child or a frightened animal.
He gives her a wry smile. "You suspect."
The doctor blinks. "It wasn't suicide." But there's a note of uncertainty in her voice.
Allen shrugs.
"Was it?" she asks.
He hesitates. "I don't know."
"Allen." She consults her clipboard. "You've had a long history of deaths. One suicide. You know as well as I do, there are no second chances."
What is this? he wants to ask. Instead, he says: "I know who did it."
"So it was a murder."
It's as if she didn't say anything. "I don't want to press charges. I don't want it investigated further."
She cocks an eyebrow. "Who was it?"
"My wife." He stares at his hands. The paramedics told him he had fractured his wrist — before they fixed it, of course. There are no such things as broken bones, anymore. No such things as bloody hands. "My ex-wife."
His body is fixed, and so is his conscience. This is the way of the world.
3.
It isn't a new life, but it feels like one. His name is Peter Grayson. Allen Grey is dead. He purchases an apartment with Liz on the edge of the city, a tiny cramped place with peeling linoleum and cockroaches. In the simmering heat of the summer, they haul in tattered furniture and make plans for the future. Liz, burning with energy, is so alive — he wishes he knew how, as if there is a secret to the way she talks and laughs and moves. As if there is an answer to the way he has lived his life (his lives) thus far.
Liz is his second chance. When he tells her this, she laughs and brushes it away. She doesn't understand until later, and she never thinks to ask; she has answers, not questions. He can never quite explain how they connect, or where, but they do. One of the few miracles of his life.
She loves clocks. Again, an enigma. But he scavenges the city to find them for her: a pocket watch like a disc of gold, a sundial with enamelled numbers, a digital relic from centuries past. He wraps them in pink tissue and hides them around the apartment. A treasure hunt for time. Only she would like that.
One day, he comes home with a tiny wind-up clock the size of his thumb. Liz sits at the table, cradling the phone receiver in her hands. There is something on her face he has never seen before. He doesn't know if it is anger or sorrow, even hate. This once, she is inscrutable.
"I talked to Emma." Her voice is flat.
"Oh." He sits down.
She stares across the table at him. "So you're married."
"Getting divorced."
"She's pregnant," Liz snaps.
"Yes." He is surprised, a little impressed, at how calm his voice is. Measured, like the notes of a pendulum in one of her clocks.
She lowers the phone and doesn't say anything. Somehow, this is worse than words.
"I brought you something," he begins.
She stands up. The chair scrapes against the floor. "Fuck off."
He falls silent.
Liz leaves an hour later. She never comes back; he doesn't expect her to. He wishes she would've insulted him, or hated him, or at least asked him why. But she didn't. She never asks questions.
Allen smashes the wind-up clock. He never had any use for time.
4.
The sixth death is a heart attack. They resurrect him, gasping and sobbing, in the ambulance. Emma stays at his side through the forty-eight hours in the hospital. With a loyalty that he admires and hates, she sets up camp on the empty bed beside him. He doesn't speak to her, only stares at the heart monitor strapped to his wrist and waits for her to leave. The hospital is abuzz with people. Healthy people. Cast adrift in this vast ocean of life, he feels only resentment.
On the second day, Emma tells him she's pregnant. He thinks of the affair he is having with Liz Hamilton and imagines moving out with her, changing his name, running away from this life and this woman.
He has, after all, nothing but second chances.
5.
An eighty-ton tractor trailer plows towards his car.
Allen twists the steering wheel — tires squeal — a sickening crunch, and the world is eerily silent. He lies in the driver's seat, blood ebbing out of him, his ears ringing and his head throbbing, waiting for the distant wail of sirens.
His car is crushed under the weight of a tree. Later, when the paramedics wheel him out on a gurney, he catches glimpse of the fractured glass and splintered wood. A world he can't reach. He wonders which one is more broken, the tree or the car, and realizes it doesn't matter. They'll never come back. Some things in this world are finite, after all.
Allen finds this reassuring.
6.
His fourth death — suicide. Emma is distraught.
"I didn't know you were suicidal," she sobs.
Allen touches her hand. "Hey. It's not your fault."
She wants to know why. Why he killed himself, why they never go anywhere, why he doesn't ever meet anyone anymore. All she ever wanted was a straight answer. He can't explain; he never could. He's changed even more, over the years of their marriage, cloistering himself within the confines of their house and shutting her out of his life. For months, he's been distant, detached.
But Emma still cares. Her presence is comforting, even though he only has to stay in the hospital for a week this time. She visits him regularly, talks to him.
"You'll never be alone," she promises.
He doesn't tell her that this is the worst thing she could say. He doesn't want to break her heart.
7.
College is a life of deaths. Allen stops counting after the third. His parents never find out, but it doesn't matter. Seat-belts and helmets are remnants of an old era; he casts them aside. Immortality has no need for restraint.
Once, a concerned doctor takes him aside to tell him that life is a beautiful fragile thing.
"Take care of yours," he says.
A week later, Allen has forgotten him.
8.
There is a boating accident and he drowns. Struggling to break the surface of the water, his lungs burning, vision blurred, limbs like stones sinking in the ocean, he finds in himself a desperation. He wants to live.
Later, he feels as if he has triumphed over some unknowable trial, as if he has proved to himself and the world that there is something inside him, something alive. Somewhere.
He swears he will never die again.
9.
When he is seven years old, Allen falls off of the roof and smashes his skull. He is dead for twelve hours. He wakes up on a hospital bed, impassive doctors prodding at him, murmuring to each other in low undertones. Tubes snake away from his body in translucent coils. His tongue is thick with fuzz, and when he tries to speak, his vocal cords strain with the effort.
"You're one lucky kid," the nurse tells him when she brings him breakfast in the morning.
You're one lucky kid. That's what everyone tells him in the coming weeks. Resurrection is a novelty, and he's one of the first to come back. He is the harbinger of a new age. He is a harbinger of life.
A month after he comes home, Allen climbs on the roof again. He picks his way across the shingles, a warm wind ruffling the stubbled growth of new hair on his head. The surgery scar is already fading. It's summer, and he has his whole life ahead of him.
Not everyone gets a second chance.
It's a wonderful world.
I loved it.
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