Well, Bryn thought, I know what happened to one of them. She’d seen him, still moving weakly in his body bag, body rotted into rags. The memory came back to her in a post-traumatic rush of sight, sound, and smell, and she felt herself waver. That’s my future.
No. No, it wasn‘t. She just had to keep telling herself that.
It was lucky Riley Block was on the staff, because there was no one, no one, better than Riley at doing the delicate, artistic work of embalming. Bryn was astonished the first time she went down to do her own work at how meticulous and neat the prep room was kept; nothing was left out, except what Riley was currently using. Every surface gleamed. Unlike the creepy atmosphere the place had had when Freddy reigned, this felt oddly warm and comfortable, even though it had the usual chilly temperature. Riley had brought in some lovely art to put on the walls, and warm lighting in the corners, and there was a subtle scent of vanilla and jasmine in the air to cover the usual uneasy spoiled-meat tang.
Bryn said hello and went to the locker to grab a gown and mask, which she tied on with practiced ease, and gloved up before retrieving Mrs. Jacoby from refrigeration. This one was simple enough that there was no need to waste Riley’s time, and Bryn needed the practice. She was discovering, as the days went by, that even as much education as she had left huge gaps in her practical experience.
Riley, she discovered, wasn’t chatty when she was working, so Bryn kept her silence, too. There was something oddly Zen about the prep room; it was like a chapel, hushed and peaceful. As Bryn made her incisions and hooked the carotid out of Mrs. Jacoby’s pale, fleshy neck, she concentrated on the details. Don’t break the surface was the first rule; the dead did bleed, particularly from the carotid, and it was a mess that ruined the clear field of vision and made embalming that much tougher. If she screwed this one up, she’d have to go for the femoral.
She didn’t screw it up.
The mechanics of the embalming went smoothly enough, and Mrs. Jacoby had died peacefully in her sleep. It was only a matter of pumping out the blood and pumping in embalming fluid, applying the hydration cream to keep the tissues supple, and suturing the mouth.
“You know the worst thing about this business?” Riley suddenly said. She stepped back from her table, sighed, put her hands on her hips, and stretched as if her back ached, which it probably did; Bryn’s already had a twinge, even though she’d probably done a lot less standing and leaning. “You can get used to the bodies, the smell, the mess. I’ve picked up bodies that were melted into furniture, they’d been down so long. You can get used to the grief, too. ”
Bryn nodded. She’d already experienced that; after the first few days, she’d realized that the tearful stories still moved her, but not in a deeply personal way. She’d put up a wall to muffle the vulnerability. That was manageable. She’d seen the bad (Melissa) and the sad (most of the rest), and so far, only one that was crazy, but it was all a manageable process now. A continuum.
“You get used to thinking of them as just skin, bones, flesh, to-do lists, but every once in a while you find something that makes you realize they used to be just like you. Just like us. ” Riley stared down at the man she was working on. He was a tough one, a car crash victim in his thirties. Handsome, too, though Bryn had more reason than most to subscribe to the whole beauty-is-skin-deep theory. “He had plane tickets in his pocket. He was supposed to be headed to Hawaii today—can you believe that? First class. He probably paid extra so he could really enjoy himself, and somewhere, right about now, they’re calling his name at the ticket counter and moving on to a standby because he hasn’t shown up. ”
Riley was right. That made it uncomfortably real. There were so many layers of reality to the world. Nothing stopped for death; nothing stopped for grief or horror or tragedy.
As if she’d read her thoughts, Riley said, “The worst part of it is that it never stops. Death keeps coming. We get older; we get tired; we get sad and lonely because nobody understands what we do or why we do it. Police and firemen, they’re heroes. Us, we’re pariahs. And every day, there are more bodies. ” She said it without any particular emotional emphasis; it was an observation, delivered calmly, but it chilled Bryn deep down.
“Then why do you do it?” she asked.
Riley turned and met her eyes. She didn’t smile. “Because I’m good at it,” she said. “Because it needs doing. Why do you?”
Originally, it had been because the money was good and the job was stable, but Bryn understood what Riley was saying. There was a certain unspoken honor to this job, a certain quiet dignity. We, Bryn thought, are the great dirty secret, the reality that runs under everything else.
And Riley was right. It was lonely.
“Don’t mind me,” Riley said, and finally smiled. It didn’t reach her sad eyes. “I’ve been at this awhile. I get maudlin. Some people drink; some get depressed; some run around having sex with anyone with a pulse. Me, I get philosophical. It’s healthier. ”
“What do you do when you’re not, you know, here?”
“I shower three times before I leave the building, and then I go out to dinner with friends. I watch movies and read books. I exercise. I live a normal life. ” Riley cocked her head and looked at Bryn with suddenly sharp, inquisitive eyes. “Don’t you?”
“Well, I have a dog. ” That was just about the only normal thing in her life anymore. “Mr. French. ”
“Dogs are good. Pets are good. People will let you down. ” Riley shook her head and put her mask back on. “That’s good work on Mrs. Jacoby, by the way. ”
“It’s easy. ”
“Nothing’s easy here. Just delicate. ”
As Bryn warmed the tinted wax in the palm of her hand and gently, gently applied it to Mrs. Jacoby’s pale, lifeless lips, she had to agree.
Joe Fideli gave her shots every day. She didn’t see McCallister at all, although she knew Fideli was in contact with him. By special arrangement, she and Fideli carpooled; he didn’t like having her on the road alone, unprotected. So she had a bodyguard from the minute she left the fortress of her apartment until she arrived at the funeral home, with was always buzzing with activity until closing time.
And still, she felt very alone when the phone rang in her office, and the distorted voice said, “I got your good-faith money, Bryn. Very nice. ”
Him. Bryn sat very still in her leather chair. She was suddenly hyperaware of the paperwork sitting in front of her, the crooked angle of the pen beside it, the way light from the desk lamp fell across things in shadows and glares. She’d closed the door to work on files, and in here, it was so silent it might have been on another planet.
She spun the chair to look out the window. That was better. There was normal life out there: sun, trees moving gently in the breeze, clouds passing. Joe Fideli pulled up in the mortuary van and backed down the ramp that led to the downstairs loading dock, delivering more clients. She felt obscurely glad to have him here, somewhere close.
“Bryn?”
“I’m listening,” she said. She cleared her throat. “Are you ready to do business?”