The Dead Don't Wear Hats

Arthur stood before the mirror at 6 AM, the way he had every morning for thirty-two years, and placed the fedora on his head. It had been his father's—felt soft as moleskin, stained at the crown where sweat had darkened it through three decades of bank management. The hat was an anchor. Arthur felt like a zombie most days, drifting through the corridors of his life, translucent and hollow, watching his own hands sign documents and shake hands without really feeling them.

The lawyer's office smelled of stale coffee and synthetic lemon. Sarah sat across from him, her lawyer's hand on her arm, looking like a stranger wearing someone else's skin. They'd built a life together. A house, a garden, a daughter in college. Now it was being divided like pieces of a pie.

"I want the spinach recipe," Arthur found himself saying.

Sarah blinked. "What?"

"Your grandmother's spinach. With the pine nuts and the feta. Emily asked for it when she called yesterday."

For a moment, the corporate zombie mask slipped. He saw the woman who'd wept when her mother died, who'd held him through three miscarriages, who'd planted spinach in their garden every spring because she said it meant hope. "You could have just asked, Arthur," she said softly. "You didn't need a lawyer to get a recipe."

That was the problem with being the living dead. You forgot you could just ask.

That evening, Arthur called his daughter. She answered on the third ring, background noise of a college party filtering through.

"Dad? You okay?"

"I have the recipe," he said. "Grandma's spinach. I thought maybe we could make it together. When you come home."

Silence. Then: "I'd like that, Dad. I'd really like that."

Arthur took off the hat and set it on the kitchen counter. For the first time in years, something besides a ghost stirred behind his eyes. The dead don't wear hats, he realized. The living do.