Boogie

In her will she wrote that there should be a time for dancing at her funeral. Everyone in attendance had to get up and move to carefully selected tunes for an hour and a half. The bar had to serve champagne and the dance hall had to have at least one disco ball.

I met a girl there. She was leaning against the wall and didn't know the deceased very well. Her father had been Charlotte's ex-fiance some decades ago.

"I hear Charlotte was a comedian," she said. "Her last words were the punchline to a joke."

"What was it?"

"The punchline or the joke?"

"Both."

"The biggest piece goes to the birds."

"That's the punchline?"

"Yeah."

"What's the joke?"

"No one knows."

I thought for a while. There was no obvious wordplay. Sexual innuendo didn't seem likely nor was it Charlotte's style. It was vague and absurd. It sounded like an aphorism that didn't mean anything.

The girl and I exchanged phone numbers. Her name was Freida and she lived in Brooklyn.

The dance session was almost over. People were tired of their compulsory celebration. Most shuffled halfheartedly to the music, looking around as if Charlotte was watching and hiding, ready to pounce on those not granting her her final wish. She was the type to do that too. Occasionally someone would jump into the center and go all out for a few minutes. Everyone would turn and cheer the dancer on or push their friends into the circle. No one wanted to look unhappy.

That night I dreamed of man-eating birds. I imagined Charlotte's body in the coffin being pried open by these huge birds and their beaks snapping at her cold flesh. They tore every bit of skin and muscle off her and gulped it all down until only a head and a skeleton were left. They even took her eyes. She had deep recesses in her face but there were faintly glowing points where her retinae should have been. She was smiling. She was always smiling.