Rachel Caine: Working Stiff

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.

“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.”