Cameron Pierce - Abortion Arcade

“Eat it,” the old woman says. “It’s good.”

Simon takes a bite. He chews slowly. He doesn’t know why he received this gift. He only accepted it to be kind.

He has never tasted a sweeter, juicier pluot.

“The ceremony is about to begin,” the old woman says.

“You can follow me over there.”

“Are you the groundskeeper?”

“I’m the accountant.”

“The accountant?”

“I settle the books of the dead. These days I bury the bodies and keep JFS running, what with budget cuts and layoffs they’ve even released the gardener, but officially, I’m just the accountant.”

“Is anyone else here… for Celia?” Simon asks.

“No one yet.”

“Maybe they’re running late,” Simon says.

“Did you expect anyone?”

“No one in particular.”

The accountant shakes her head sadly. “No one ever shows up late to these.”

The mustached one said the hospital would send a notice of death to everyone in Celia’s immediate family. However, Celia had been estranged from her family since before Simon met her. He has never even met her parents.

He intended to call his and Celia’s friends, and also his family.

He failed to call anyone.

The accountant walks past him out of the glass dome and says, “Follow me.”

“Where are we going?” Simon says.

He cannot feels his limbs. He thinks he must be going into shock. He’s out of breath. He cannot breathe.

He stares up at the glass dome pixilated by tears. A plane screams high above.

“We don’t do funerals in the garden. Come around to the parlor.”

“OK,” Simon says.

The accountant bustles away. Although she is barefoot, she walks at a fast clip. The patchwork fabric of her dress billows around her like a carnival tilt-a-whirl. Simon has to jog to stay by her side.

The accountant’s presence calms him a little bit, but uncertainty and shame gnaw at him. Uncertainty about the nature and regiment of funeral affairs. Shame over the absence of mourners, the absence of flowers. He failed to bring flowers.

“Do people still bring flowers to funerals?” he asks. “I know from reading articles that it used to be traditional, but what’s the tradition now? I’ve never been to a funeral.

I don’t know what’s expected. Are flowers normal? Am I doing some thing wrong?”

The accountant tilts her head and stares at him. Her eyes are cold and mean. Her blackened maw cracks into a smile.

They walk along a trail of stones that curves around the glass dome and zigzags through the fields beyond up to a trailer overtaken by flowering vines. The vines are blue and Simon initially mistakes them for strings.

“These vines are fake,” he says. He knows this because the vines do not possess strings. He has learned that living things have strings attached.

“No, they’re not,” the accountant says.

The accountant pulls a set of keys from beneath her dress and unlocks the door of the trailer. They go inside.

The trailer is the standard classroom type. Cheap variegated carpet on the floors, burlap curtains over the windows, pastel butcher paper stapled to the walls to hide the structural cheerlessness, and a sputtering heating/cooling unit in the corner. Simon has not set foot in one of these since his school days. Rows of black foldout chairs fill most of the room. In front, a podium and a coffin rest on a plywood riser.

“Take a seat,” the accountant says, approaching the podium.

“Is Celia in the coffin,” Simon says.

“It’s her funeral, isn’t it?” The accountant does not pause or turn around to respond.

“Can I look?”

“Look later.”

Simon chooses a seat in the first row, center. He pictures every chair in the trailer occupied, except for those in the front row because the other funeral attendees, in awe of the depth of his grief, have left the front row empty.

People stand in the back, but nobody dares sit in the front row with Simon. He can almost hear the people whisper,

“That man loved her,” and “She loved that man,” and

“True love found them,” and “Even now, I long for what they had,” and “It’s always like this.”

Simon turns in his seat, first caught in his daydream and then by the empty chairs. Family and friends are not here.

The accountant clears her throat.

He faces her.

“Celia Conk is survived by her husband, Simon Conk.”

He clenches his right hand in his lap.

“The records of her birth and early life are contradictory and incomplete, and are therefore unworthy of repeating. In recent years, she graduated from Gramercy College with a Bachelors of Science in Ornithology. She was employed by the St. George Free Zoo from the month of her graduation until April of this year. At the time of her death, Celia Conk was $1,916 in debt. She had not made a payment toward nullifying her debt since her termination from St. George. Her life was presumably a happy one, albeit short.”

The accountant sighs. She looks bored.

“Is that all?” Simon asks.

“Unless you have something to add.”

Simon rises and approaches the coffin. He kneels beside it, presses his right hand against the lacquered lid about where he estimates Celia’s face to be, and bows his head. He has never been to a funeral so maybe this is how all of them go, but it feels wrong to him. There must be something he can say.

Nothing rises. Maybe silence is best. No reason to fill her coffin with words. Words don’t help the dead.

“Do you have anything more to add?” the accountant says. Simon opens his eyes and looks at the accountant. He realizes that his face is wet. “That is all,” he says.

“Since it’s only the two of us, do you mind if we discuss payment here,” the accountant says.

“Payment?”

“Funerals aren’t free, you know.”

“Is there somewhere else we can go to discuss payment? I mean—” he gestures to the coffin.

“I’m afraid I shouldn’t have suggested that we have another option. My office is all the way across the property and I’ve got to bury yours and prepare the next body before my three o’clock appointment arrives. There’s really no time.”

The next body. Three o’clock appointment. These are the terms of death. Simon hates this old woman who calls herself the accountant.

She takes a black binder from the podium and steps off the plywood riser, comes and sits next to him. She opens the binder across her lap and clicks her tongue against her teeth, like a teacher attempting to show a failing student what they’re doing wrong.

“Total cost is $1,916.”

“How can it be that much? You hardly did anything.”

“The cost of a basic funeral is the debt owed by the deceased at the time of death. Had your wife owed nothing, her funeral would be free.”

“Nobody said anything about payment.”

“It’s in the agreement that you signed. Ignorance does not absolve responsibility.”

“Will Celia’s debt be cleared, or is this additional?”

“It’s additional.”

“Can I pay in installments?”

“There’s a monthly plan, but I warn you, the interest is steep.”

“Fine.”

“How much would you like to pay now?”

“Can you mail the bill? I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do today.”

The accountant studies his suit. She has a look on her face that says she’s registering the blood and sweat and mud for the first time. She seems to spend a long time studying the flop ping sleeve of his suit jacket.

“You’ve had a bad time of this,” she says. She shuts the binder and looks at her wristwatch. “If we hurry, I suppose there’s time to run over to my office.”

“Is there more to discuss?”