Walter Mosley - Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore

I could tell he wanted to say something, just a sentence of agreement or harmony, but instead Jude put his head down and let it bounce in a little nod.

The crowd was getting louder. Bold men and saucy women were sharing memories and despair. The chatter seemed to be an attempt at holding off the silence that was so deep inside that chapel.

The chapel was almost as large as the Rock of Ages House of Worship where my family prayed — but the big church at Day’s Rest was a house of Death, not hope. The only reason people gathered there was because someone had died. There were no Sunday school lessons or weddings in this place. The transient parishioners bellowed and laughed, keened and cried to keep off the extraordinary quietude and the inescapable reality that no proper house of worship could ever really contain.

I closed my eyes and let the sounds of the mourners’ words and laughter wash over me. Again I had the feeling of being far out at sea. I couldn’t make out the individual words and sentences of the babbling gurgle, but I understood the meanings of the rising and lowering octaves.

All this brought a smile to my face.

“Are you ready, Mrs. Pinkney?” Lewis Dardanelle asked.

I opened my eyes, realizing that I had drifted into dreams while waiting for the service. It seemed so perfect that a chuckle escaped my lips.

Dardanelle was shocked and that pleased me. He was so used to being in charge of the final interment. Not only did he orchestrate but he knew every emotion and action that went through the minds of the principals. My nearly joyous ejaculation threw him off his game and that brought out a stronger laugh.

“Do you need a moment to collect yourself?” he asked, still flummoxed by the sudden lightness of my mood.

“Absolutely not.”

Lewis turned away, walked out into the public eye, and took the few steps up to the podium. There was a control board up there that he used to turn the music down, but not off.

The clamor of the mourners lowered to hushed whispers.

The tall coffin banger (as he was sometimes referred to by the women who fucked him in his casket-bed) cleared his throat and the whispering stopped.

“I have been asked to say a few words before the next speakers,” he said in his deep, soft voice. “This is unusual because I almost always represent the funeral home and not the deceased.

“But in this case the family is known to me. Theon Pinkney was a frequent client.” Lewis stopped and showed a rare honest smile. “Not, of course, in his current state. No. Theon took care of his friends. If someone in his trade died penniless and alone, Theon brought them to me and paid for the services. If some poor bereft mother or daughter or spouse could not handle the work it takes to make the transition, Theon was there to lend a hand. He knew as much about this business as I do. He knew about the embalming chemicals and brands of coffins, state and city ordinances, and the many denominations that would and would not speak for the dead.

“This of course refers to Theon only as far as my business life goes. Most of you know me. The only role any, or at least most of you, have seen me fill is the funeral director — the undertaker who takes your loved ones away.”

Lewis stopped there for a good quarter of a minute. I believe a real emotion was passing through him, a memory of someone he was or might have been.

“But Theon knew me in other ways. Sometimes he’d wake up in the middle of the night and call me at the mortuary. ‘Hey, Lew,’ he’d say, ‘what you doin’ down there tonight.’ ”

What shocked me was how much Lewis was able to sound like my husband.

“Often I was deep in my work,” Dardanelle said, continuing, “but some nights I was just sitting around in the office. Theon would come over with a deck of cards and a bottle of... mineral water.”

That got a few laughs. Theon always called cognac his mineral water.

“We’d play for matchsticks and drink, trading stories of what happened at work that day. We both practiced interesting trades.”

More laugher.

“One evening I remember Theon telling me how he had to get on the set and stop a jealous lover from strangling his girlfriend on camera. The man was much bigger and more powerful than Theon, but he wouldn’t let that young girl die...”

Lewis was referring to Tina Bottoms — at least, that was her screen name. Her boyfriend, who went only by the moniker Turk, had gotten it into his head to immortalize them both by killing her on film.

Turk broke Theon’s arm, jaw, and ankle, but my husband saved that girl and helped her move back to Amherst, Massachusetts, where she’d been born.

“He was a good man and he treated me as a friend,” Lewis said. “He never made fun of me or my predilections, and he loved his wife. I will think of him every time work slows down and I am sitting at my desk wondering what is it that I’m missing.”

Again there was silence from the podium. That stillness seemed to fill the great hall of death. At least thirty seconds passed before the undertaker could bring himself to speak again.

“There will be only two other speakers at this service. The first will be the deceased’s good friend Jude Lyon. Mr. Lyon will be followed by Theon’s wife, Sandra Peel-Pinkney.

“Those of you who donated to this service have already been informed about where the wake will be held. There you will each be given a chance to drink mineral water and toast the dead.”

Dardanelle walked away from the podium and down into the pews. A few seconds passed and the audience began to shift in their seats. I was moved by the friendship Lewis evinced in those few words. It showed me something about Theon that I knew but rarely witnessed — he was a good friend to a certain kind of man: an outcast who had something to offer but with few takers. He felt comfortable with people like Jude and Lewis, and with him, they belonged.

Something was wrong. I went through all the things I knew at that moment, trying to find out what had misfired. I was dressed the way I should be. The room was full of Theon’s friends. Rash was in the audience...

“Jude,” I said. “Jude.”

I reached out to touch his arm but he grabbed my wrist before I could. His grip was hard.

“You have to go up there, baby,” I said.

He gazed in my eye. He was an angry child caught in his own conflicting desires.

Then he let me go, jumped to his feet, and scurried out onto the dais. He tripped on the first stair, caught himself, and then stepped slowly up to the podium.

Lewis had adjusted the microphone for his great height and so Jude brought it down and twisted the snakelike metal stalk until the little receiver was there at his lips.

He cleared his throat and looked around. He turned to me and I gave him my best smile.

He turned back to the audience and then remembered the folded-up paper in his hand. This he unfolded and placed on the podium before him. Then, for an uncomfortable span of time, he read the words silently to himself. I wondered if he thought that he was reading out loud and the assembly could hear him.

I was about to get up and go out to him when he raised his head.

“Theon Pinkney was my best friend,” he said in a voice that was flinty and certain. “I don’t really know what I meant to him but he was my best, best friend.”

Jude splayed out his right hand over his chest. I thought that this was maybe the only time I’d seen the real man.

“Person of interest,” he said then. “That’s what I’ve been called many times. A person of interest. That’s not a good thing, not at all. I mean... it’s good for the person who others are interested in insofar as it’s good that they’re interested, because that makes you special — unique. But at the same time” — I realized then that Jude was not reading from the creased page in front of him — “it means that there’s a whole world out there wanting to tear you down. They want to catch you, imprison you, maybe even take your life. A man,” he said, and then he glanced at me, “or a woman who rises to the level of interest is something special. While everyone else is following canned music they’re moving away, looking for their own.