Bianca Said

By Stacey Levine

A few years back, I Skyped him from my dorm. Yes, he was dead, but he had his laptop with him and picked up the call.

My computer’s window fuzzed, frosty blue. Then he was there: the craggy face and big brown hair. He was teaching some kind of class and in one hand gripped a stack of papers; the other held a fistful of golf pencils. I could see the students behind him, leaning in their chairs. Legs poking from beneath the desks. They were glum, maybe because their instructor, dead, a ghost, was giving them a test.

He turned away from the class to face me in his screen.

“Hi!” I said. “You’re there!”

The class was listening but I didn’t care.

“The dead are always there,” he said.

“Right,’ I said into his iron stare. “That’s good! Uh, we met once, you probably don’t remember, but I want to tell you that I’m a big fan of your work. You gave everything to writing. Your books are so great. I mean your writing is fantastic, so Bosch but so real. You were so arrogant!” I giggled. “Manic. Your mind was a traffic clover mess.”

“The real point being,” he said, “that you’re intruding on this class.”

The students behind him: slumped like frozen clumps of grass. Maybe they hoped I’d keep talking so the test would be delayed.

He was scowling. “Here’s my question,” I said. “I mean, did you ever doubt that you could write books?” I said. “I mean, does a person need a measure of arrogance in order to write?”

He moved through the rows now, handing out the test. “Jesus Christ,” the teacher breathed. “How did you get my number?”

I wasn’t going to tell him that, so I smiled into the screen and said, “Even now, dead and all, you’re kind of a jerk. But really, you shouldn’t’ve died.”

“Oh, shouldn’t I have?” he said. “That would have been for you to decide?”

As he walked to the rear of the silent classroom, he suddenly floated off the floor for a moment, pedaling his feet in the air. I’ve heard of this in folk tales — it’s called a “Post,” a way of signaling to everyone that you are dead.

The students watched, but seemed unimpressed. They were mostly concerned about the test. They had their golf pencils to bite.

“Class look,” I called loudly to them. “Your teacher is amazing. Even dead, he still wants you to learn.”

One of the students stood. He wore a blue Padres baseball cap. He looked vulnerable, uncertain of himself in the world. But he addressed the instructor: “We already took the fabulism test, man. Why should we take it again?”

“Because your grades sucked the first time,” was the answer. “And you’ll fail it again, Freeman, no doubt.”

The student in the cap laughed, sitting down, twirling a golf pencil in his fingers, eyes calm. As if he already knew about the seismic love that someday would arrive to his life. The pencil fell to the floor with sweet plinking notes. He is luckier than his teacher, I thought.

The instructor must’ve heard me thinking, because he walked back to his computer screen and told me, “I’m done with this call. Goodbye.”

“Wait,” I yelled. “Just one question — when you were writing, did you feel at peace with yourself?”

“No,” he said, and the Skype window went blank. But for a moment, leaning in, before he cut the call, he gave me a little waxy conspiratorial smile.

I couldn’t sleep all night in a beautiful way.

Stacey Levine is the author of four works of fiction including The Girl with Brown Fur (Starcherone/Dzanc), Frances Johnson (Clear Cut Press), Dra—(Sun & Moon Press), and My Horse and Other Stories (Sun & Moon).