The moment the computers at the Center of Civil Registration changed Mr. K’s status from “alive” to “dead,” he was trudging through his daily push-ups next to the king-sized bed he’d been sharing with his wife for twenty-seven years. He struggled through the last few push-ups, but completed them all the same. His wife was asleep, covered in her long off-white nightgown. After catching his breath, he kissed her forehead. Quick and dry. Over the course of their marriage, the forehead was the latest in the series of features he’d been kissing as a token of affection upon saying farewell.
After applying cologne so sharp and identifying that the concierge could wish Mr. K a good morning without raising his head, Mr. K left for work. As the marketing director of Ethura Beauty Products he had to look handsome, young, immortal even. He enjoyed what he did, even if it was, in part, to make up for the coldness he felt at home. On his way to his office, as he brushed past his secretary’s desk, she briefed him on his upcoming appointments and the list of calls he had to return, one of which was from Leila, his mistress.
Leila was no different from Mr. K’s past mistresses, all of whom were picked out at the shooting sessions he administered for product promotions. He never stayed with any of them for more than a few months—in some cases, only a few hours. Every new commercial brought a new host of women eager to wear the cream, pose for the camera, and sleep with the most powerful man in the room. That was how as Mr. K grew older, the age of his mistresses at different moments in time, remained more or less the same.
To him, this meant he had managed to stay young.
***
That said, one thing was different about Leila: the moment the computers at the Center of Civil Registration changed Mr. K’s status from “alive” to “dead,” she found out she was pregnant. She wasn’t sure when and how it’d happened, but she knew it was his. She couldn’t tell him this news when he dutifully returned her call. So, they arranged a lunch date at his favorite restaurant.
Hearing her voice, Mr. K recalled her breasts, glorious, and turned-up, the first thing he’d noticed about her amid the pack of other women at the shoot.
He rubbed his groin. “Should I book a room for the after?”
She rubbed her belly. “Not today.”
Later at the restaurant, Leila waited for him to finish his beloved steak, using the time he took to slice morsels of meat, in order to phrase her news. As if to warm herself up to the topic, she started by asking Mr. K why he never had kids.
“At the beginning, my wife and I were happy enough without an addition,” he said while cutting the red meat. “And then it was too late.”
Too late? she wondered.
“You know, the love was gone. I had already taken lovers…” Mr. K continued. “Why bring a human being into such an ecosystem?”
Leila was weighing her own ecosystem with Mr. K when his first credit card didn’t go through. Neither the second and the third completed the transaction. But the owner knew Mr. K and opened a tab for him. Still, after that unpleasantness, Mr. K didn’t look like someone willing to hear that he’d be a father soon. Leila decided to defer to a better time, to a time when his credit cards would work.
***
Mr. K spent the better half of the rest of his afternoon on the phone. No one in any of his three banks knew why his accounts were frozen. As the issue escalated, he climbed the ladder of organizational hierarchy. Eventually, somewhere in the bureaucratic maze, a district manager asked him, “Are you sure you are Mr. K?”
“Of course I am,” Mr. K answered.
He thought he heard a stifled chuckle, perhaps a sigh.
“Well, sir, not sure how to put this… According to our files, you’ve been reported dead.”
Mr. K usually stayed at work well after six p.m., but on that day he stormed out at 4:45 p.m. If he had been deemed dead, the prospect of expanding their products to the Southeast Asia market certainly could wait.
At home, his wife was sprawled in front of the TV, a cushion in her lap, watching some program about making a colorful dessert. On any other day, he would have mocked her about her lack of talent in the kitchen, bringing up the last time their dinner was either overcooked or undercooked. Today, he informed her he was dead.
“What will happen to your life insurance?” she exclaimed. Then gathering her thoughts, pleased with herself, she continued. “If they act on this false data to close your bank accounts, they should as well pay the life insurance.”
It was a morbid thing to say but then Mr. K figured he’d have probably thought the same had it happened to his wife. He glared at her and dragged himself to the home office.
He started to contact the list of friends who might know how to bring him back to life: lawyers, software engineers, his more politically active acquaintances, and even a few doctors and one philosopher. Compassionate as they were to his problem, none had a clue. He was in it all by himself, it struck him. He ambled back to the living room with his hands linked on his back. The room was cluttered with incongruous decorations and ornaments his wife had devoted her life to acquiring.
He felt dwarfed by that plenitude. How was that different from being inside an oppressive casket, closed up tight, and buried?
But of course, he was as lonely as that, as dead as he was reported to be.
He lay on the sofa and covered himself with a throw blanket, like the other nights when he fell asleep in front of the TV. And like the other times, his wife didn’t wake him so that he could sleep in their bed.
When the phone rang, he was up, or almost up.
It was a man, voice fully awake: “Good morning, Mr. K.”
“Is it morning already?”
“I’m terribly sorry to wake you, Mr. K, and also terribly sorry for the bad experience you had yesterday.”
Mr. K wanted to point out these two issues were not equally important. But it wasn’t wise to be a smartass. The man’s voice did carry some sort of authority. And Mr. K didn’t want to diminish his chances of a resurrection.
“I wasn’t really asleep,” Mr. K said.
“That’s understandable, Mr. K, considering—the circumstances.” The man coughed to bring back the gruffness in his voice. “I’m calling from the Ministry of Important Affairs.”
“So are you bearing good news?”
“I’m afraid I can’t say over the phone.”
The man’s husky voice was not attractive.
“Then why did you call me?”
The man wanted to meet Mr. K at the Ministry of Important Affairs.
“Introduce yourself at reception. The rest will be taken care of,” the gruff voice on the other end of the line said, before disconnecting.
***
In the morning, Mr. K didn’t complete his regular push-ups, didn’t spray his cologne, and didn’t even kiss his wife’s forehead. He changed into the first thing his stretched hand found in the wardrobe and left home. The concierge had to raise his head in order to wish Mr. K a good morning.
He was received warmly, too warmly perhaps, when he reached the reception desk at the Ministry of Important Affairs. The elevator opened and a man in a suit, wearing round glasses stepped out towards Mr. K. He’d booked one of the rooms in the penthouse where all important affairs were usually discussed, he said. Together, they climbed eighty-two floors in the elevator.
In the glass-walled boardroom, they sat across from each other with a wide table in between.
The man with the round glasses apologized again for the inconvenience. “Mr. K, yours is a curious case, I should admit. First, let me shed some light on our system. We’re using cutting-edge technology that interconnects otherwise isolated networks in a seamless fashion, be it banks, health care, payroll, or… civil registration. This is an impeccable system in which we place our true belief and take much pride. However, if, in theory, an error happens, it can propagate to other systems too, you must see.”
“But how can an error happen in an impeccable system?”
“Like I said: in theory.” The man rested his elbows on the table. “Errors never happen in our system.”
“But,” Mr. K paused, presuming that the man would guess where Mr. K was going. The man was silent. “But we both know something has gone wrong here.”
“Exactly! And that’s why I’m saying yours is a curious case.”
“So, your impeccable system, it is able to bring me back to life, correct?” Mr. K chuckled nervously but his expression froze when the man with the round glasses shook his head.
“This is an impeccable system we’re talking about, Mr. K. Things aren’t supposed to go wrong or require repair. There’s nothing to be fixed in this system.”
“And yet things did go wrong.”
“And yet things did go wrong,” the man repeated, pursing his lips and glaring at Mr. K as if chastising him for exposing this loophole. “Would you care for a coffee by the way?”
Mr. K waved the offer away. “Exactly why did you ask me to come here?”
“To let you know this problem can’t be fixed. And it’s not our system’s fault. Though you’re free to say whatever you want in front of the media.”
“Media?”
“Oh reporters and the like! Sooner or later, it’ll leak. They’ll be all over you once they find out. You’ll be a sensation.”
“A dead one!” Mr. K grunted.
“Even better!”
And that was how the meeting ended. Mr. K took the elevator down eighty-two floors alone.
***
Mr. K and his mistress the lovely Leila went to the same restaurant as they had the day before. Uncharacteristically, Mr. K ordered the cheapest option on the menu. Leila asked for her usual, the chicken salad.
Both had news. Neither had any idea how to begin.
Their order arrived sooner than usual. Mr. K was taking his second bite when Leila announced, openly, “I’m pregnant.”
Mr. K continued to chew. It was harder to digest the bland sandwich than the news. To put things in perspective, he mused, if an impeccable system could take his life by mistake, a condom as well could create a life.
“I’m dead,” he said, putting his sandwich down.
Leila had never heard anyone literally proclaim they were dead. She presumed he meant it figuratively, that with the baby he’d be scandalized, and abandoned by his wife.
“I want to keep it.” Her smile carved two holes into her cheeks. “And don’t get me wrong. I don’t expect anything from you. I just thought you had to know.”
Mr. K’s eyes settled on Leila’s face, her slightly open mouth, her dimples. The day they met, the shooting day, the photographer had wanted to capture Leila’s best smile. Two hours and two hundred-and-thirty pictures later, the photographer had caught the smile he wanted.
But Mr. K had wanted more of that smile. It was the second thing he’d noticed about Leila as she lounged amid the other cover models.
Over his dry sandwich, Mr. K didn’t know what to say. He searched for something nice, something supportive to offer. After a long pause he said, “I don’t know what to say.”
***
Mr. K couldn’t stand the office so he returned home. His plan was to catch up on sleep, preferably of the dreamless variety, and hope his subconscious put things in order. But his mind was too cluttered to yield easily. Soon the front door swung open and his wife emerged weighed down with countless numbers of shopping bags. She showed him her conquests, a collection of unnecessary trinkets, mostly dolls. As the collection of useless objects paraded in front of his eyes, Mr. K burst into a sobbing fit and couldn’t stop.
His wife bent forward, caressing his cheek. “Oh baby, are you crying because of what they said?”
He nodded, fighting off the tears. He couldn’t tell her about the cover model he’d knocked up.
It had been a while since his wife had caressed him, since she’d called him baby. He raised his head. She embraced him. He touched the small of her back. She kissed him. It seemed like a good idea to make love. He could divert the blood circulation from his overwhelmed brain to some other organ for a time.
They undressed each other, an exercise they were once fluent in. Mr. K pushed the dolls into a corner and pulled his wife onto the bed. He was surprised at his own virility, of how his body, all of it, was performing. It was a testament to his being alive. He scaled her body up and down. She forcefully ran her hands through his hair, asking him to do things to her. He obliged. In her turn, she did things she knew he liked. Then he entered her. With each thrust he groaned and she moaned. But before long, suddenly she turned her head and raised her hands as if to surrender.
He stopped. “What’s wrong?”
She pulled away from him, a tear lodging in the corner of her eye. “I’m sorry. So sorry! Can’t get it out of my head.”
He began to run his hands over her hips. She pushed them away.
“Get what out of your mind?” he asked.
“Your death! I feel like… it feels like I’m doing it with a corpse.” Her feet scanned the floor, hunting for her slippers. Then, she rose, doing her best to avoid his confused gaze and stepped out.
The ridiculous dolls with their eternal smirk stared at him.
***
The next day, the concierge raised his head and wished Mr. K a good morning. His usually routine tone was streaked with a flurry of excitement.
Mr. K decided the concierge must know about his status which meant everyone knew. Outside, he brushed past the reporters without acknowledging their insistence, their existence. They followed him until he managed to catch a cab. They yelled their questions: how are you going to fight back? Are you legally able to sue them now that you have been deemed dead? Do you feel as alive as before?
At the office, while the reporters’ questions kept bubbling up in his head, he was received with beaming faces, bordering on sympathetic. His secretary flashed a practiced smile but failed to announce his scheduled meetings and messages. Mr. K strode directly to his office and slammed the door. The door, however, remained shut only for a couple of minutes before the Head of HR knocked and without waiting for a reply, opened it.
“May I come in?”
Mr. K pointed at the empty chair across from his desk. The Head of HR obeyed.
They used to have a good working relationship. On the occasions where the company had to downsize, the Head of HR worked swiftly, like magic. They would compile a list of people who had fallen from grace and the Head of HR would fire them with such eloquence and efficiency none of these now-former employees ever realized what had happened until much later.
So when the Head of HR started by asking, “Don’t you need some time to rest?” Mr. K knew where he was headed.
“I am not sick,” he said.
The Head of HR grinned his signature grin, the one reserved for hiring or firing.
“Look! Obviously, some mistake has occurred. We both know that. But we’re running a company that lives off the notion of perpetual youth, of immortality. You’re the marketing director, you know best. People believe what they see.” He extended his open palm towards the window, as if the pedestrians walking twenty-two floors below were the ones believing what they saw. “I guess what I’m getting at is… with the news piling up as we speak, it is not advisable for you to keep your current position. And, this happening to us, to your position of all, God damn it! The consensus is it’d be better for you to be out of sight.”
“Better to be out of sight.” Repeating other people’s words was a trait that Mr. K had picked up since his death. It was less to concur than to indicate wonder. The Head of HR, however, mistook it as consent and grinned.
***
As a former marketing director, Mr. K wasn’t a stranger to the world of buzz and fame, but even for a man of his stature the increasing attention he received was unexpected, colossal. A wide variety of media outlets chased him, yearning to know about a dead man’s daily life. He gradually learned how to put mundanity into glamorous words in order to come off as intriguing. He was paid well and, it was his sole condition, fully in cash. As a dead man, he wasn’t legally required to pay taxes.
His wife had managed to cash in, and received a lump sum for his life insurance. She was also bequeathed shares of his company, the house they lived in, and whatever was in his savings account at the time of his death. She could afford even more luxurious trinkets, even a few pets.
She was also a celebrity, by association. Living with a dead man only came second to being that very dead man. Little by little, they both accustomed themselves to their new lifestyle. Mr. K returned to being the man he used to be: passing days with his wife and enjoying life with his mistress.
But Mr. K’s celebrity status had incurred a hardship on his relationship with Leila. In the public eye he’d nurtured for himself the spitting image of an innocent victim: a career-oriented and honorable husband who suddenly dropped dead after an unprecedented mistake beyond his control. An extramarital affair would have shattered such an image.
So they spent more time at Leila’s modest apartment where, before his death, he’d never set foot. That was how he learned she had a sweet tooth, a soft spot for rom-coms, and that she tended to sing along to the radio, if out of tune. He learned she was more than her set of glorious up-turned breasts, even more than her smile.
Sometimes, Leila thought none of this could possibly be happening. Until recently, she had been a college graduate, destined to become a teacher. Had she not been beautiful and ambitious, she would probably be teaching chemical reactions to teenagers rather than nurturing a fetus out of wedlock and sharing a bed with a married man more than twice her age. It was so much to take, but she was beginning to like it. She saw a childish innocence in Mr. K, hidden from everyone else, so endearing she decided to reconsider the life path she’d always taken for granted. Ironically, she welcomed the fact that Mr. K was divested from his identity. It smoothed out their power balance. Her main worry, though, was how to get by financially. She had landed a couple of pregnancy photoshoots but had to cancel other engagements as her belly grew. She didn’t have enough to pay her bills.
So.
He would pay for her. She would cook for him. He would set the table. She would light the candles. They would make love.
It was a good plan.
***
The public attention had begun to subside when Mr. K appeared in photograph in a daily paper with Leila. The caption read, “Dead man kissing”.
Luckily, he spotted it on his way home. He picked up the paper, leafed through its pages, turned back and took refuge at Leila’s place. He figured he could bide his time until the people forgot about him once again.
But then his wife began to speak out in live interviews, calling him a jerk, a coward, among other things. Wearing her gaudy jewelry she said he was dead to her. Then, she corrected herself by saying, “Oh, I forgot. Of course he’s dead.” She guffawed nervously, humiliatingly. Her numerous cats and dogs mewed and barked as if to concur.
Offended and enraged, Mr. K asked Leila to wear a tight dress, one that would make her belly bulge. He wanted to announce to the world that Leila was not just some whore, that he was in love and soon he’d be a father.
The polls revealed the public had received his interview warmly. Ironically, they admired his honesty. They liked his courage, his pursuit of love despite his recent miserable months. They rallied. They signed petitions, pressuring the government to resolve his problem. It wasn’t fair for a baby to be born fatherless.
Mr. K didn’t believe the protests would work and he was surprised when he received a call from a man with a familiar, husky voice: “Mr. K, you’re very popular.”
***
They soared eighty-two floors in silence. In the conference room, they both occupied their previous chairs.
“We have strict orders from above to bring you back to life, whatever it takes.”
“So the status can change if the above wants it to change?”
“No!” The man was pleased to see he could still manipulate Mr. K. “I believe your mother is still alive?”
Mr. K frowned. “My mother? She’s in a home. She has Alzheimer’s.”
“As long as she’s alive our solution works.” The man scratched his cheek. “Mr. K, we’ve decided that you should be born anew. As far as our system is concerned you’ll be a new record in the database, your own brother.”
“My father has been dead for–”
“Eight years! Yes, but in our system the field for the father is optional. There are cases where the father is not known upon birth, you understand. Like I said, our system is an impeccable one. We have solutions for these little problems, built-in.”
“So let me understand, your system does allow a menopausal and amnesiac woman to give birth, but it can’t fix its own blunder?”
The man widened his eyes to signal his disappointment. “Can I offer you a coffee?”
“Will I have to change my name?”
“Actually I like your name. It reminds me of the guy in that famous novel.” He adjusted his glasses and raised a finger. “You can keep it. This isn’t a bug by the way. It’s not an exception at all. It’s by design. Some parents are too lazy to pick a new name for their younger kids. So we do allow it.”
It sounded like a good deal, the best Mr. K could get.
***
Mr. K and his son were born within three days of each other. One in the Ministry of Interiors, the other in a hospital nearby. A handful of magazines ran the news with a doctored picture of him in baby clothing lying in a bassinet.
The Head of HR invited Mr. K back to work as soon as he was legally born. They couldn’t officially hire him until he turned fourteen, but he’d be a consultant until then. The Head of HR concluded the conversation by saying, “You’ll be a rock star. Your rebirth embodies our manifest.”
Soon, Leila’s body was returning to its previous glory. On the morning of his first day of work, Mr. K decided to start–or restart–his daily push-ups next to the queen-sized bed he’d been sharing with Leila for months. Leila was feeding their baby. With his every rise and fall, Mr. K stole a glance at the beautiful nursing scene: Leila holding his son, his son’s tiny hands hanging from her breast. They finished at the same time. Leila was tugging the straps of her nightgown back up when he stopped her. He placed the baby in the crib. Then, he peered at Leila. She’d managed to pull one strap up, leaving one breast exposed. She looked willing, ready to make love for the first time since the baby. Mr. K placed his hand on the nape of Leila’s neck. She moaned softly as he gently bit her ear. His free hand let the strap slip. Next, both his hands wound around her breasts. She held him by his ears. He ran his tongue on her nipple, while at the same time he was pulling down his shorts. The baby made a sound. Distracted, Leila craned her neck. Mr. K intensified his foreplay, trying to bring her back to the game.
“He’s okay,” he reassured her. But she wasn’t with him anymore.
She pulled away from him, a tear lodging in the corner of her eye. “I’m sorry. So sorry! Can’t get it out of my head.”
He began to run his hands over her breasts. She pushed them away.
“Get what out of your mind?” he asked.
“Your birth! I feel like… it feels like doing it with–” She tilted her head toward the crib.