Dead is Better Read Online Free PDF

beach, not a hot (I know it’s hot not because I feel it but because I see Serena dabbing her forehead with a tissue) morning in September.
    Julia wears tight very white jeans that, from the rear, reveal a white thong, high heeled sandals that show off sapphire blue nail polish on her toes, and an oversized yellow silk shirt. Her red hair is pinned up in a loose bun and she wears sunglasses with rhinestones set into the rim. My shit brother Mark must have just come from yoga. His leather flip flops make sucking noises on the stone as he passes under me in sleeveless t-shirt and—get this—purple drawstring cotton pants.
    The clown gene will, despite everything, express itself.

23.
    “No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.”
    —Plato

    ***

    I try to catch their murmured small talk, but am distracted by the dog, who suddenly ascends onto the slick and crowded surface of the glass table, among the glittering glasses and vases, just as a strong and gritty gust arrives from the hilltop, blowing leaves and dust into the pool. If I didn’t know better I’d think the dog had something to do with the wind, but that’s impossible.
    The scene is like a double-exposure: what I realize now are the major stockholders of AndyCo. sitting around an outdoor table with a spectral dog superimposed upon their crystal glasses, flowers, diamond rings, shiny watches—a dead dog staring right in their faces if they could only see.
    “Thank you all for coming,” Alan, my lawyer says. “I know a meeting this early on a Monday morning is highly inconvenient, but now’s as good a time as ever to go over Charlie’s estate, and MultiCorp has requested that the papers be signed as soon as possible to expedite the sale of AndyCo.”
    “Was there anything about Charlie that was convenient?” Julia asks, then laughs.
    If it were possible to redden in anger and humiliation, I would, but my deathly pallor is permanent—I haven’t the blood required to blush. And Julia has earned her laugh—she’s the only one of my ex-wives who received AndyCo. shares in the divorce.
    I float closer to Mark, right next to the dog, and the glass table parts for me like butter.
    “Charlie’s business is pretty straightforward,” Alan begins, looking through his file of papers. “ I couldn’t prevail upon him to make a will, so he died intestate.” Supreme dope-smoker Alan, my roommate at UCSB who only wanted to be an actor, instead joined his father’s law firm where his greatest role is to pretend to give a shit about his clients.
    Intestate. Mark blinks as this little nugget of information sinks into Julia’s brain, and then a frown appears between her slender, manicured red brows. My cousin Sheila takes a sip of iced tea and stares at her watch.
    “Because he declared no heirs, Charlie’s shares of AndyCo., and of the rental properties and other real estate holdings and family investments all go to Mark, his brother.”
    Jesus. What a dumb schmuck I was. I didn’t expect to die. Not so soon. I am or was only 38 when I left that world and entered this one. And to be honest, I didn’t give a fuck. Or enough of one to think about leaving what was mine to KPFK or the UCSB English Department or to have had the energy to try to thwart my shit brother in death as he had thwarted me in life.
    Another gust blasts the patio, rattling silverware, blowing loose leaves into the water glasses, and making the shiny green stone earrings tremble beneath Julia’s small perfect ears. The dog moves close to my lawyer, almost nose to nose. Luckily she isn’t breathing, or he’d feel and smell her gamey presence upon his just-shaved face and wonder if he were about to be kissed or bitten.
    The wind is stronger now, and, I can tell from the way the palm trees at the edge of Julia’s property are bending, and from the way the living dab their damp faces, hotter. I realize a Santa Ana is blowing in from