Sarah comes up to me after our shift and says, I'm going to the graveyard tonight. You want to come?
She's told me about what happens there. What she and her friends do.

Tonight? I ask. It's July. I figured you wouldn't go back until Halloween.

No, she says. Too cold then.

She tells me it's almost always in the middle of summer. The dead of summer--when the heat and the humidity make the air almost solid. With every breath, you feel like there's a storm coming.

So, you want to go or not?

I didn't know. It sounded exciting when she first told me about it. But I'd just lost my mother that February. She was buried there at that cemetery.

Just stay away from her grave, Sarah says. Look--you'll love it. If you don't, you can pretend it was just a dream. Lot of people do that. It isn't hard.

So I go. It's better than sitting in my apartment, every window open, begging for the slightest breeze, wishing I wasn't lying in my bed alone.
About twenty people show up. Pretty equally split between boys and girls, which doesn't always happen, Sarah says. Someone has a skeleton key and all of us file through the gate.

What do I do now? I ask.

Go find a spot you like, Sarah says. A place you feel comfortable. A place that speaks to you.

I ask if I should take my clothes off.

She says, Only if the spirit moves you. Then she giggles and scurries away.

My friend's kind of a dork.

I walk. I stray from the path. I bruise my shins against the gravestones. It's dark here. The only light comes from the city looming up around us. The dirty, worn marble glows just the slightest bit.
I find a grave--a flat rectangle of stone the size of a twin bed. The name's been worn away by probing fingers. An angel stands sentinel above it--hands folded in prayer, one wing broken off.
I lay down on the stone. Close my eyes. I wait.
I can feel when it starts. It's like a mist seeping out of the ground all around me. A cool mist. Like the kind that clings to Rockaway at dawn.

It moves up and over me like fingers. Tendrils. It slips over my eyelids, under my clothes, into my pores.

Suddenly there's pipe smoke at the back of my throat. A dog's wiry fur in my fingers. Bacon fat tearing between my teeth. The smell of newspaper ink and coffee. A voice nearby is telling me her plans for the day.

It fades away and someone else settles in.
Fresh stubbled cheeks against my thighs. Fingers curled around soft hair. Tongue licking, probing. Hot breath.
Cold glass pressed against the side of my face and beneath my closed eyelids I see the outlines of buildings--skyscrapers viewed from above. A sillouette of a city that doesn't exist anymore. A sudden orgasm tears all that away. Someone else takes its place.

Toes clawing into hot sand, acid burning through my calves. Lungs on fire. Salt on my tongue. Rotten seaweed-smell of the ocean. That perfect skin-temperature breeze against my bare chest.
I want to jump up and run circles around the graveyard. But I don't. I don't want to break the spell.

This is what they miss, Sarah explained to me. It's not friends or family or the big things. It's the simple things.

You can't have your favorite breakfast. You can't go for a run. You can't have a quick fuck in an elevator.
Not when you're dead.
Except once or twice a year when the air is so hot and thick even the dead don't want to be cooped up inside. They seep out. Pull away from their graves just a little. If someone's waiting. And willing.
We can feel those things for them.

My beach runner glides away. Someone else takes his place. Bare feet pushing on rungs. Pig-tailed head spinning with the height. Hot metal on my legs and my stomach rising into my throat as I slide, down, down, falling--then hands under my armpits, lifting me up and spinning me, spinning and spinning and I'm laughing, laughing, laughing.
The little girl--the long, long dead little girl--spins away and someone else takes her place. Then another and another. All through the hot night. Favorite kisses and favorite mornings. Favorite meals from long-lost recipes.

The purr of a cat on my lap.
Fresh sheets and warm sunlight.
Fingernails scratching lightly across my back.
A long, hot drag on a cigarette.
A scalding shower at the end of the day.

When my senses are my own again, it's almost dawn. The sky is still dark, but I can feel it--that first ray of light straining to rip through the horizon. I stand up, joints cracking. Every inch of my skin is a raw nerve. Beautiful and exposed. There's a breeze coming from the East. I close my eyes and let it brush against my cheeks. I think about my mother. How she'll never feel this again. How she'll never feel anything again.
I find the path. But instead of walking toward the gate, I go deeper. I pass Sarah, lying on the ground--naked, shivering, smiling. I keep walking. I find my mother's grave. Grass new, headstone with letters fresh-cut and sharp.
I wonder what she misses. The smell of frying sopapilla. My father's beard against her chin. I'm a little scared to find out. But I close my eyes. And wait. And hope it's not too late.