Working Stiff tr-1 Read online

  Bryn had no idea how he could tell the difference between Mrs. Granberry and, say, Mr. Fideli from this distance, but he seemed to know what was coming.

  Well, that was all right. She was prepared for anything.

  Whatever Bryn had been prepared for, it wasn’t this. Not raw, real, personal emotion from someone only a few years younger than she was. The girl sitting across from her was eighteen, just out of high school. Now that she’d finally raised her head, she kept staring at Bryn as if somehow, if she hoped hard enough, Bryn could make it all just go away. As if the universe would right itself again. It doesn’t work that way, Bryn wanted to say, and she had to fight against an impulse to reach out and hold the girl’s hand. She’d worked as a grief counselor, but that had been phone-bank stuff; she hadn’t been there in person. She hadn’t felt the personal impact of it quite this way. Her parents were both still alive, thank God; she’d never lost anyone close to her—well, except for her sister Sharon, and that wasn’t the same thing at all.

  Looking at this girl was like looking in a mirror and seeing the future grieving that was coming for everyone, eventually.

  The mother was both easier in one way, and more difficult in another—fortyish, solid, mostly impassive except when she dabbed at her eyes as if more concerned with her mascara than her grief. “My husband wanted a frugal sort of funeral,” she announced as the opening shot. Although Mr. Fairview had introduced Bryn as leading the session, Mrs. Granberry dismissed Bryn and focused on him directly. “I just want a plain coffin, nothing fancy. And no viewing. No embalming.”

  Bryn cleared her throat. Mrs. Granberry’s eyes moved to her, then back to Mr. Fairview. “How did your husband pass?” Bryn asked, and offered Mrs. Granberry the tissue box. The woman waved it impatiently away.

  “He died in his sleep,” she said. “Bad heart. I always told him it would do him in, but he never listened.” For some reason, she then glared at her daughter, as if it were somehow the girl’s fault. The girl flinched and looked down. “I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”

  “It’s very helpful to family members and friends if you hold a viewing; it gives everyone a chance to say their good-byes. Gives them a sense of closure,” Bryn said. “We would, of course, make your husband look just as you want to remember him; it’s part of our full service—”

  Mrs. Granberry’s head snapped around, and her eyes narrowed in sudden fury. “I said no embalming!”

  Bryn took a deep breath. “Mrs. Granberry, I know you’re very upset right now, but the fact is that embalming is a state requirement, unless you choose cremation.”

  “It is?” The woman looked at Mr. Fairview, who nodded soberly.

  “I’m afraid so,” he said. “Miss Davis is quite correct. The only exception to this would be if your religious beliefs did not allow embalming.”

  “Oh.” The mother frowned at Bryn, as if the rule were her personal fault. “Well, we’re Methodist; I don’t suppose that counts for anything these days. All right, fine. I suppose if we have to go to that much expense, we should have the viewing too. How much?”

  “Mom,” the girl said faintly. “Please. This is about Dad. You’re not buying a car.”

  “I know it’s about your precious daddy, but if you want to go to that fancy school next fall and have clothes on your back, you’d better let me do this my way, Melissa!” There was real anger in that sharp, vicious tone. Bryn felt its snap even from the sidelines.

  Melissa was shaking all over. Bryn had to bite her lip to stop herself from saying something that wouldn’t be funeral-director appropriate to the mother, but despite her control, her tone dropped a few degrees in warmth. “We’ll work with you to make it affordable,” she said. “Let’s take a look at some choices.”

  When she opened the binder that showed the coffin selections, and asked the delicate question, “Was your husband a large man?” Melissa Granberry burst into hysterical tears and ran out of the room. For a moment, Bryn was frozen in shock; then she looked at Mrs. Granberry, who was stone-faced and dry-eyed.

  “My husband was a fat, sloppy frog,” she said. “Don’t mind my daughter. She brought him a bowl of ice cream yesterday, which definitely was not on his diet. She thinks she killed him. And she probably did, too. She always was his pet.”

  Bryn’s palm itched to make contact with the woman’s cheek. Instead, she managed a forced, artificial smile. “I’m sure you’ll talk with her about that,” she said. “Obviously, it wasn’t her fault.”

  “No?” Mrs. Granberry stared at her for so long it felt like ice picks were driving into Bryn’s head, and then she turned her attention to the coffins. “I like this one.”

  Fortunately, it was one of the more expensive plus-size models. Up-sell.

  It was a very long hour’s consultation.

  While Mr. Fairview got the paperwork together, Bryn fought down the urge to smack the ever-loving shit out of Mrs. Granberry. She excused herself and went to wash her hands and calm herself in the ladies’ room—where she found Melissa.

  To be accurate, she didn’t find her at first—she saw the stain, trickling in red streams toward the drain in the center of the floor. Nail polish, she thought first, very irrationally, and then her military mind said, Blood. Still fresh.

  The second of shock snapped with a physical sensation of electricity burning through her nerves.

  Bryn banged on the closed stall door at the end. “Melissa!” No answer. Bryn slammed her shoulder into the metal door, but it didn’t open. She tried again, then braced herself against the wall and kicked, hard.

  The lock gave way, and the bathroom door slammed back. Melissa Granberry was propped on the toilet, leaning against the wall. Her eyes were open, still damp, and tears still stained her cheeks. Her skin had the awful, ashen look of the corpses lying in the prep room one floor below.

  She’d slashed deep, all down the interior aspect of both arms, and finished it off with a deep cut to her left wrist. Couldn’t do the right, Bryn thought with a cold, precise kind of clarity, because she’d cut the tendons in her left hand. It didn’t really matter; she’d done the job well. The knife—a small folding thing, a man’s pocketknife with a deer on the handle—lay in a shimmering pool of blood between Melissa’s feet.

  Bryn lunged forward, grabbed the girl, and put her on the floor. She leaned on both of the girl’s arms, applying pressure with both her hands. “Medic!” she yelled, and then remembered. “Help! I need help in here!”

  Melissa’s pupils were already wide, and she showed no reaction at all. Bryn didn’t feel any sign of a pulse, no matter how hard she pressed.

  It seemed to take forever, but it probably didn’t; the receptionist came running, then Mr. Fairview. Mrs. Granberry’s stony calm finally shattered; she began screaming and had to be taken away. Eventually, there was an ambulance, and people in uniform, and Bryn was shuffled off to the back to stand helplessly as they loaded Melissa up on a gurney and wheeled her away.

  It all seemed like some surreal nightmare. And at the same time, it was all weirdly familiar. She’d seen a fair number of loaded gurneys, after all.

  The receptionist, Lucy, helped her wash up in the men’s room, chattering all the while about how she’d once found a man who’d shot himself in a viewing room, and wasn’t it funny how that didn’t happen more often in this kind of business, where people were running on adrenaline and grief?

  Bryn didn’t really feel much. She supposed it was shock more than anything else; she’d seen plenty of dead and dying before, but not like this. Not in such antiseptic surroundings. Someone—Mr. Fairview?—brought her a nice hand-knitted afghan and sat her in one of the viewing rooms, pressed a glass of whiskey in her hands, and left her alone.

  Bryn couldn’t get it out of her head—the girl’s dark, pleading eyes, her sobs, her guilt. She sipped the whiskey but didn’t really taste it, even though she hated the stuff, and then all of a sudden it came through to her with absolute, crystalline
clarity.

  Melissa Granberry was going nowhere but to the morgue, and eventually she’d end up downstairs in the prep room, just like her father.

  I could have done something. I could have stopped it. She was just a kid.

  Bryn put the whiskey down on the side table and began to cry in helpless, silent sobs.

  Mr. Fairview was right. The tissues were in just the right place when she needed them.

  Chapter 2

  “I’ve got to hand it to you, honey,” said Lucy several hours later. They’d been interviewed by the police, Bryn had been escorted to the locker room to shower and change, and then there had been more whiskey, because Lucy had said she needed it. Bryn supposed it did make things better, or at least less connected to what she was feeling. “That was one hell of a bad first day. Worst I’ve ever seen. Good news is, it can only go up from here, right?”

  “Right,” Bryn said. She felt comfortably numb now— not peaceful, just not feeling much of anything. She especially could not feel hope for a better tomorrow.

  “Then I think it’s time for you to go on home. Hot bath, more wine, maybe get a massage.” Lucy wheeled her chair back from the reception desk and pulled a Givenchy purse from the bottom drawer. She was a gorgeous woman with flawless dark cocoa skin, and she was generously curved in ways that shouldn’t have looked good but did, especially the way she dressed. Bryn wondered how much time she spent every day on the carefully lacquered updo of her hair. Probably more time than Bryn spent all week, added together, getting her own ready. “You going to be all right on your own this evening?”

  “I … Sure.” In truth, Bryn didn’t really know, but she wanted to be okay. “I’m going to talk to Mr. Fairview, finish up some paperwork. And I’m supposed to introduce myself to Mr. Watson in the prep room.”

  “Oh, don’t let Mr. Fairview catch you calling it that. It’s preparation room, always.” Lucy’s friendly expression took on a sharper edge. “My advice is, if you have to say hi to Fast Freddy, do it tomorrow. And whenever you go down there, you watch it with him. That man is trouble; I told Lincoln that from the day he was hired on. We used to have a great restoration man, a real artist. His name was Vikesh, but he moved off to Arizona. Now we got Fast Freddy. I have to tell you, I am not impressed. I saw Mrs. Salzman’s viewing last week—I swear, it looked like she was on her way out to pick up sailors at the dock. No class, that man.”

  Bryn tried for a smile. “I’m pretty sure I’ve met worse.”

  “You may think so, but he’s a slimy little shit, I don’t mind telling you.” Lucy gazed at her a moment, clearly undecided. “You got your car here, honey?”

  “I took the bus. But it’s okay; the last one runs in a couple of hours. I don’t want to go home just yet anyway. I need to walk off the Scotch a little.”

  “Well, okay. And don’t you worry about tomorrow. One thing about this business—it’s steady. Every day, you get different sad people with the same sad stories. Sooner or later, you get used to it.” Lucy reached over and patted her hand, a quick, impersonal little gesture. “You take care, Bryn. I like you. Hope you stick around.”

  The office felt really empty with Lucy gone. Bryn walked the hushed paneled hallways back to her office and found that Mr. Fairview had left the Granberry folder neatly in the center of her desk. She signed all the paperwork, filled out the cost sheets, and made a list of to-do items before setting it aside.

  Fairview had also left a sticky note on the folder that read, Don’t forget to brief Freddy downstairs about the arrangements for Mr. Granberry; he needs to know as soon as possible.

  It was the last thing she had to do. Easy enough to pick up the phone—it had a clearly marked extension labeled PREPARATION ROOM—but she felt that she ought to get the lay of the land down there. She was already having the worst day of her life…. She might as well get the slimy Mr. Watson out of the way, if the introduction was going to come.

  That way, tomorrow there would be nothing she had left to dread.

  There were two realities in all funeral homes—the public space, which was all beautifully appointed and quiet and comforting, and the prep areas, which were medical and sterile and cold. The stairs going down were sort of a transition between the two—still carpeted, but with an industrial metal railing and an institutional fluorescent light fixture overhead. The bottom floor was all Formica, easily cleaned. There was a freight elevator in the back, and down the hall seemed to be storage and rolled-down loading-dock doors. Bryn stopped outside the frosted-glass door of the prep room. She breathed shallowly; the smell of embalming fluids always made her a little queasy at first, until she adjusted to it. The ever-present smell of decay was just the cherry on top. She knocked on the door, a hesitant rap of knuckles. She could see shadows moving inside.

  “Come in,” someone said, and she entered. There were four spotlessly clean stainless-steel preparation tables in the room, each with all the pumps and tubing necessary to the embalming process. Only one was occupied at the moment—Mr. Granberry, fat as a frog. He really wasn’t that fat, Bryn thought. And he had a nice face. She was mildly religious, and she hoped that wherever Mr. Granberry was, he could comfort his daughter now. Poor Melissa.

  Standing over Mr. Granberry’s corpse, massaging fluids through his tissues, was a handsome guy only a little older than Bryn…. Golden hair, creamy skin, big blue eyes, and a devastating smile. Except for what he was doing at the moment, he was completely smoking hot.

  The smile put her on guard. It was just a little too predatory.

  “Hey,” he said, jerking his chin up in welcome. “Bryn, right? Just a sec. Got to finish this; I’m almost done. He’s pinking up okay, don’t you think?”

  She nodded, not sure she knew what to say, except, “You’re Mr. Watson?”

  “Fast Freddy, they call me,” he said, and winked. “Don‘t let it bother you. Everybody in this industry’s got a nickname, right?”

  “Do they? I don’t think I do,” she said. She felt faintly ill, and she wasn’t sure coming down here was a good idea, given the day she’d had. Her head was spinning a little from the drinks.

  “I think you got one today,” he said. “Double Trouble Davis.”

  “Oh. You heard?”

  “About the girl? Of course I heard. It only looks like a cave down here. I don’t actually live in one.” He shook his head, and she expected the normal platitudes—what a shame, or she must have been so distraught. “What a dumb-ass bitch.”

  Bryn blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Look, well-adjusted people don’t go offing themselves messily in funeral home restrooms. If she wants to take the easy way out, fine. I’m not standing in her way, but if she was going to do it, the least she could have done was do it at her own home, not our place of business. Now we’re the ones stuck cleaning it up. Trust me. She was a selfish little bitch.”

  It wasn’t so much what he said as how he said it that made her muscles go tense and quiet; Freddy looked ripe, but there was something rotten in the relish he took in dissing the dead girl. It was like biting into a juicy red apple and getting a mouthful of worms. “Her name was Melissa. And she was only eighteen.”

  “Old enough to vote, fuck, and know better,” Freddy said, and shrugged. “Like I said, she was a selfish bitch. End of story. So, you got any orders on Mr. Granberry, here?”

  Freddy’s callousness reminded her of some of the soldiers she’d served with, the ones who’d lost all feelings of humanity, especially for the Iraqis, whom they saw as walking meat ready for body bags.

  She’d tried to avoid those people. Hadn’t always been successful. And here was another one, thrown right in her path. “Yes,” she said, grateful for the opportunity to deliver the paperwork and escape. She handed over the folder, which he took in his latex-gloved left hand as he continued his gentle massage of the former Mr. Granberry with his right, working the embalming fluid through his chest. “Thanks. See you tomorrow.”

  “Oh, man, y
ou’re going to dump and run? Not cool, Double Trouble. The least you can do is help me out, here. I’ve been stuck all alone in the dead room for days; I’m starved for the company of a pretty woman.” He flashed that brilliant smile at her again. “You’ve had enough of all this shit, I’ll bet. Tell you what. Instead of me giving you the grand tour of the freezers, how about going out for a drink, or preferably lots of drinks? Could be your lucky night.” With one last squeeze of Mr. Granberry’s puffy biceps, Freddy stepped back and peeled off his blue gloves, which he three-pointed into a biohazard bin. His plastic apron followed, leaving him in a lab coat with neatly pressed jeans showing beneath, and some shoes that Bryn was almost sure were Kenneth Cole, or at least that expensive. “Unless you want to spend the evening with Mr. Gran, here. I mean, he’s not much of a talker, but he’s working a nice after-death stiffy right now. You want to see?”

  “No.” Bryn tried to keep her voice even, her gaze straight. She had the eerie impression that Freddy was one of those men who would go for the slightest sign of weakness. “I’ll be going now.”

  “So you didn’t get into the business for the cold ones? Some do, you know. Lucky you, then. I’m nice and warm.” He winked at her, and Bryn wanted to throw up. “Right, it’s drinks, then. We’ll see about what comes after.”

  Bryn took a step back as Freddy rounded the end of the embalming table, suddenly aware of everything—the chilly temperature of the room, the deserted mortuary, the fact that the alcohol had led her into what could be a very bad decision. “No. Thanks. Really, I was just … on my way out.”

  “Going home to what? A single-serving frozen dinner and a twin bed? You don’t look like a woman with a boyfriend—at least, not a boyfriend who’s keeping you satisfied, and I can always tell. So how about that drink? You can tell me all about how lonely you are.”