Anne Corbitt

The Death of Bipin

Thursday morning Dom walked to Midtown to see a man die. It was an arranged death, one advertised in the newspaper the day before. Dom made a point of reading the paper each morning in the coffee shop downstairs from his office. He spent most of his time in the classifieds, enjoying a good laugh at how pathetic the rest of the world was. On Wednesday, when he saw the ad for the death, Dom laughed out loud, placing the paper down and removing his glasses to rub his eyes. He shook his head and hoped someone sitting nearby would ask what was so funny. No one did.

That afternoon he read the ad again, this time out loud to a group of coworkers huddled around the receptionist’s desk. The new receptionist had huge breasts so Dom made a point of stopping by her desk a few times a day. He’d started planning for conversations with her ahead of time, watching standup comedy and foreign documentaries for material. The week before, Dom repeated a joke he heard from a black comedian that made his coworkers, and the receptionist in particular, groan. He’d earned the nickname Dumb Dom, and since then he’d been searching for opportunities to change his image.

“Bipin Gavaskar,” he read aloud, “seer and spiritual prophet, has learned of his impending death. Witness Thursday 10-11 am.”

Chuck from Accounting rolled his eyes and said, “People will believe anything.”

A few people laughed. Dom laid the paper out in front of the receptionist and leaned over her to point out the ad. She spread her long fingernails and pushed his body away.

Guarino, the new guy in Sales, winked at the receptionist and then clasped a hand onto Dom’s shoulder. “Yeah, fucking hippies,” he said. “Right, Dom?”

The receptionist crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. “How do you know they’re hippies?” she asked.

“You just know,” Guarino said.

Everyone laughed. The receptionist gave Guarino a smile while pursing her lips. She always flirted with him the most. Dom thought it was ridiculous that just because Guarino ran half-marathons and tanned all the women in the office liked him. Sometimes Dom thought Guarino and the receptionist would start going at it right in the middle of the office. No matter what anyone else did, the women blushed more when Guarino was in the room.

“I think I’m going to go to it,” Dom announced, interrupting the laughter.

They all laughed and said, “No way, Dumb Dom. You can’t handle it.”

“Just watch,” Dom said.

Guarino turned to go back to his desk, and the other men followed him. One of them yelled back over his shoulder, “Take pictures.”

The receptionist went back to typing without saying a word. Dom folded the paper in half and walked into the break room for some coffee.

The following morning, Congregation Ashi-a-shi wasn’t easy to find. Between the directions Dom printed from the website and an old city map, he couldn’t have found his own apartment, much less some random church in another part of town. He searched the neighborhood, passing the same internet café twice, before stumbling on the right building. It was nothing more than a walk-up apartment sandwiched between an Indian grocery and a shoe-repair/leather goods shop. Had it not been for the pink sheet of paper reading, “Death, Second Floor,” Dom would have missed it altogether.

The front door opened to a steep, narrow staircase with uneven steps and plaster walls that provided the sensation of the walls closing in. When he was fully inside and the door shut behind him, Dom became aware of how warm it was. The air around him hung heavy on his skin, and by the top step, Dom was sweating.

Upstairs, he found a wide room with windows on the far side and a card table covered in pamphlets to the right. The wood floor creaked from the heat. The weight of Dom’s eyelids doubled. A blonde lady with a plain face sat behind the table. Her eyes were closed. She rubbed her nose with a tissue.

Dom approached the table. He straightened the hairs of his goatee.

“Hey, Sugar.” he said. “How are you doing?”

She looked up, her eyes focused over his shoulder. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah, surely,” he said. “Is this where I come for the death?”

She checked her notebook. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Bipin. That whole thing. If you’ll have a seat, it should begin any minute.”

She handed him a brochure on the venue. An equal opportunity religious sanctuary. A Baha’i group met there Wednesday nights. Jews for Jesus most Fridays. There was a picture of a colorful group on the cover with a brown woman in a sari, a black man in a fez. A thin elderly woman with a cross hanging from her neck. All smiles and white teeth.

The room went from empty to almost full in a few minutes. A woman sat on the first row, a few chairs from Dom, with knee length hair she ran between her fingers. She must have been growing it out for years. A man in the back ate clumps of rice from a tupperware container with his bare hands. There were men in tunics and overweight white women with pale skin. Dom cracked his knuckles and leaned back in his chair. The backs of his thighs stuck to the inside of his pants.

The blonde girl checked her watch. She wiped her runny nose across the front of her hand, the same hand touching the pamphlets. Dom watched her fingers, damp and sticking to the paper.

The man, Bipin, came through the side door at exactly 10 am. Dom knew it was him from the women crying, their massive arm fat shaking. Dom was afraid some of them might start convulsing. He knew CPR, but hated the thought of having to use it.

Bipin was not much taller than five feet, but he looked even shorter in the long cape and fast walk. He moved past the chairs and to the front before the door closed. He spun his cape around and settled on the ground. He hummed, closed his fingers into fists and placed them on the floor. He bowed his head.

“Baden, Ashan, Mra Kidel,” he chanted.

Dom flipped through the brochure for a translation, maybe a glossary in the back. But nothing.

The audience joined in. “Baden, Ashan, Mra Kidel.”

They added hand motions with their palms open and fingers spread, reaching to the ceiling. A few of the crying women fell to their knees. “Save him,” they said. “Reward him.”

Dom glanced back. They were all on their knees except the man with the rice. He sat in the last row, tossing handfuls into his mouth, sometimes missing. Grains of rice trailed down his shirt. Dom had to look away.
“Baden, Ashan, Mra Kidel.”

Bipin raised his body and straightened his legs until he stood. The chanters lowered their voices. He spread his arms out towards the windows on either side of him and then began to spin, his cape following behind. The brown of Bipin’s skin blurred into his red clothes, and he spun so quickly, Dom became dizzy trying to keep up. He thought he knew what part of the blur was the old man’s nose, but when Bipin slowed down, Dom realized he was wrong. It was his ear instead.

Bipin came to a stop, letting his cape fall in wrinkles down his side. He raised his arms to the ceiling. “My time has come,” he said. “I can feel it. The sun has risen to its place and soon this life will seep from my muscles and drain from my bones.” He lowered his arms to his side.

“Baden,” the audience continued. “Ashan.”

The muscles in Bipin’s neck loosened. He exhaled. His mouth pulled tightly into thin lines, then unfolded into inches of wide lips. Bipin’s face reminded Dom of riding a bike up the hill near his parent’s house. He hadn’t thought about that in a long time. The hill was high when Dom was a child, and fearsome. Still, he biked it almost every afternoon. His thighs burned when he climbed to the top, but that wasn’t the best part. Coming down was, taking his feet off the pedals and his fingers off the handlebars and not knowing if he would land in the bushes in front of his house or the trash cans pulled to the road for garbage day.

Dom watched Bipin in silence. He focused on the rise and fall of the old man’s chest. The breathing was deep, relaxing. Dom felt sure the time was near. He wondered if death felt like that, a coast in the wind down a steep hill. Death was not something Dom usually thought about. Even when his father died two years before, Dom spent the funeral drinking with his cousins and slapping the ass of a cater waitress. But sitting there, he decided if a man just moments from his death felt that calm, maybe dying wasn’t going to be so bad. He wished for death a minute, the release of it, his mouth open in laughter and the wind through his teeth.

Had you told him at that moment of the receptionist, of his nights spent eating dinner on a tray alone in front of the television, of his increasing age or his empty bed, Dom would not have believed you. In fact, he would not have heard you at all. The only sound he could hear was the air whipping past his ear. His fingers felt only the ribbed rubber of the handlebars. While he breathed in sync with the man before him, expecting each breath to be the last, Dom only saw the cushion of his neighbor’s thick ivy.

But Bipin’s last breath didn’t come. They waited and waited. Dom didn’t realize how much time was passing, until the man with the rice starting yelling. Dom looked around and behind, remembering suddenly where he was.

“Wait,” the rice man said. He rose from his chair, stepping into the aisle and raising his hands above his head. “Wait. It’s five past eleven.” He held up his watch. “This man is a fraud. A liar.”

At first a few people questioned the accuracy of the man’s watch, but as minutes continued to pass, they soon had to agree it was after eleven. One lady suggested perhaps it was meant to be 11 am in India, and people nodded, until someone pointed out the time zone in India was hours ahead.

“This man is a fraud,” the rice man said. He pointed. Grains of rice fell from his shirt to the ground. His eyes narrowed. “He has made a mockery of you. He is not a true seer. He is a fake.”

Dom watched the mouths as they, one by one, closed into sneers. The heads began to nod in agreement. Dom wondered if his own head was nodding without his noticing it.

“Fake,” they cried out. “Liar. Devil. Phony.”

The long haired woman beside Dom balled her tissue up and threw it at Bipin’s head. Others followed with pens, coins, wallets and cell phones. A few books and a set of keys. “Traitor,” they said. “Impostor.”

The pale women began to throw tampons, tubes of lipstick, and stuffed teddy bears. The men, their styrofoam cups and dirty socks. One man tried to spit on Bipin, but he was too far away and ended up only wetting the chair in front of him.

Bipin began to cry. He looked up in time to be hit in the nose by a ball of tinfoil.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I tried.”

Someone made a paper airplane out of the brochure and aimed it at Bipin’s ear. A frisbee sliced into his knee.

“Don’t hate me,” he said. “I wanted to. I really did.”

The blonde girl came out of the mass and took Bipin by the shoulders. She led him to the doorway, deflecting packs of chewing gum with her body, and escorted him down the stairs. Dom heard the front door open and slam closed.

The crowd quieted. The women faced each other, and the men kicked their feet against the folding chairs. Dom could still hear the yells bouncing off the walls and across the room.

Then, as if nothing had happened, the man with the rice turned and walked out. The man beside him followed. Soon there was a line of people filing down the stairs. Dom stood still, inches from the pile of junk and weapons. No one came to get their things. He wondered how some of them would unlock their cars.

The blonde girl opened the door and stepped back into the room.

“Oh,” she said. “I thought everyone had gone.”

“People left their stuff,” Dom answered.

“Don’t worry about that. They always come back for them later on.” She straightened the rows of chairs.

“Always?”

“Well, most times.”

“This has happened before?” Dom asked.

“Every few months. Bipin promises this time is for real, and they all come running like it never happened before. When he does die, no one’ll believe it.”

Dom looked back to the pile. “But they got mad. They threw things.”

“They usually do,” she nodded. “Some bring their trash with them.”

The blonde girl began to restock the pamphlets from a cardboard box underneath the table. She made perfect stacks, straight and even with the others.

“Why?” Dom asked, though as the words left his mouth, he felt silly. He knew the next time Bipin advertised death, he would be there.

He said goodbye to the blond lady and walked down the narrow stairs, turning his body sideways to fit more comfortably. The world passing on the other side of the door felt loud and angry. Dom thought about taking the steps back up, finding a comfortable chair, and awaiting the next event. The blond lady wouldn’t judge him. People must do it all the time. But the door tapped from the wind, and, like a song, it beckoned him outside.

Dom pulled his collar high when he stepped onto the sidewalk. His eyes watered. The wind blew through the alleys between buildings and entered the street with force. As if his very breath had been punched from his stomach, Dom watched himself exhale the same puffs of air as those who walked by him. There was nothing different about the way he stood, or breathed, or was. He slipped into the crowd, dissolving into the people and the day.

Around him women passed with grocery bags, men in suits shuffled their briefcases from one hand to the other, and death seemed very far away. The cold whipped against his cheeks, and he forgot that he had ever been warm. He checked his cell phone for missed calls. He had some time, he figured, before he needed to be back at the office. Time to stop for a sandwich and a cup of coffee, time to decide exactly how he’d tell the story that afternoon around the receptionist’s desk. The more he made her laugh, the harder those breasts of hers jiggled. And, damn, he didn’t mind looking at that.