A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper 1)

"Pardon?" Charlie stopped tying himself up.

"I dress in mint green because of my first name. It's Minty. "

Charlie completely forgot what he was worried about. "Minty? Your name is Minty Fresh?"

Charlie appeared to be trying to stifle a sneeze, but then snorted an explosive laugh. Then ducked.

Chapter 9

9

THE DRAGON, THE BEAR, AND THE FISH

In the hallway of the third floor of Charlie's building, a meeting was going on between the great powers of Asia: Mrs. Ling and Mrs. Korjev. Mrs. Ling, by holding Sophie, had the strategic advantage, while Mrs. Korjev, who was fully twice the size of Mrs. Ling, possessed the threat of massive retaliatory force. What they had in common, besides being widows and immigrants, was a deep love for little Sophie, a precarious grasp on the English language, and a passionate lack of confidence in Charlie Asher's ability to raise his daughter alone.

"He is angry when he leave today. Like bear," said Mrs. Korjev, who was possessed of an atavistic compulsion toward ursine simile.

"He say no poke," said Mrs. Ling, who limited herself to English verbs in the present tense only, as a devotion to her Chan Buddhist beliefs, or so she claimed. "Who give poke to baby?"

"Pork is good for child. Make her grow strong," said Mrs. Korjev, who then quickly added, "like bear. "

"He say it turn her into shih tzu. Shih tzu is dog. What kind father think little girl turn into dog?" Mrs. Ling was especially protective of little girls, as she had grown up in a province of China where each morning a man with a cart came around to collect the bodies of baby girls who had been born during the night and hurled into the street. She was lucky that her own mother had spirited her away to the fields and refused to come home until the new daughter was accepted as part of the family.

"Not shih tzu," corrected Mrs. Korjev. "Shiksa. "

"Okay, shiksa. Dog is dog," said Mrs. Ling. "Is irresponsible. " Not once was the letter r heard in Mrs. Ling's pronunciation of irresponsible.

"Is Yiddish word for not a Jew girl. Rachel is Jew, you know. " Mrs. Korjev, unlike most of the Russian immigrants left in the neighborhood, was not a Jew. Her people had come from the steppes of Russia, and she was, in fact, descended from Cossacks - not generally considered a Hebrew-friendly race. She atoned for the sins of her ancestors by being ferociously protective (not unlike a mother bear) of Rachel, and now Sophie.

"The flowers need water today," said Mrs. Korjev.

At the end of the hallway was a large bay window that looked out on the building across the street and a window box full of red geraniums. On afternoons, the two great Asian powers would stand in the hallway, admire the flowers, talk of the cost of things, and complain about the increasing discomfort of their shoes. Neither dared start her own window box of geraniums, lest it appear that she had stolen the idea from across the street, and in the process set off an escalating window-box competition that could ultimately end in bloodshed. They agreed, tacitly, to admire - but not covet - the red flowers.

Mrs. Korjev liked the very redness of them. She had always been angry that the Communists had co-opted that color, for otherwise it would have evoked an unbridled happiness in her. Then again, the Russian soul, conditioned by a thousand years of angst, really wasn't equipped for unbridled happiness, so it was probably for the best.

Mrs. Ling was also taken with the red of the geraniums, for in her cosmology that color represented good fortune, prosperity, and long life. The very gates of the temples were painted that same color red, and so the red flowers represented one of the many paths to wu - eternity, enlightenment - essentially, the universe in a flower. She also thought that they would taste pretty good in soup.

Sophie had only recently discovered color, and the red splashes against the gray shiplap was enough to put a toothless smile on her little face.

So the three were staring into the joy of red flowers when the black bird hit the window, throwing a great spiderweb crack around it. But rather than fall away, the bird seemed to leak into the very crack, and spread, like black ink, across the window and in, onto the walls of the hallway.

And the great powers of Asia fled to the stairway.

Charlie was rubbing his left wrist where the plastic bag had been tied around it. "What, did your mother name you after a mouthwash ad?"

Mr. Fresh, looking somewhat vulnerable for a man of his size, said, "Toothpaste, actually. "

"Really?"

"Yeah. "

"Sorry, I didn't know," Charlie said. "You could have changed it, right?"

"Mr. Asher, you can resist who you are for only so long. Finally you decide to just go with fate. For me that has involved being black, being seven feet tall - yet not in the NBA - being named Minty Fresh, and being recruited as a Death Merchant. " He raised an eyebrow as if accusing Charlie. "I have learned to accept and embrace all of those things. "

"I thought you were going to say gay," Charlie said.

"What? A man doesn't have to be gay to dress in mint green. "