Christopher Moore - A Dirty Job

“Well, I suppose—”

“I’m a horrible person. My mother is dying of cancer and I want to punch her lights out.”

Charlie put his arm around his sister’s shoulder and started walking her toward the front door so she could go outside and smoke. “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he said. “You’re doing the same thing, trying to reconcile all the moms that Mom ever was—the one you wanted, the one she was when you needed her and she was there, the one she was when she didn’t understand. Most of us don’t live our lives with one, integrated self that meets the world, we’re a whole bunch of selves. When someone dies, they all integrate into the soul—the essence of who we are, beyond the different faces we wear throughout our lives. You’re just hating the selves you’ve always hated, and loving the ones you’ve always loved. It’s bound to mess you up.”

Jane stopped and stepped back from him. “Then how come it’s not messing you up?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because of what I went through with Rachel.”

“So you think that when someone dies suddenly like that, that this face-reconciliation thing happens?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a conscious process. Maybe more for you than for Mom, you know what I mean? You feel like you have to put things right before she’s gone, and it’s frustrating.”

“So what happens if she doesn’t integrate all that before she dies. What happens if I don’t?”

“I think you get another chance.”

“Really? Like reincarnation? What about Jesus and stuff?”

“I think that there’s a lot of stuff that’s not in the book. In any of the books.”

“Where’s this coming from? I never got the impression you were spiritual. You wouldn’t even go to yoga with me.”

“I wouldn’t go to yoga with you because I’m not bendy, not because I’m not spiritual.”

They’d gotten to the door, and when Charlie pulled it open it made the same sound a refrigerator door makes. When they stepped out onto the front porch he realized why, as a wave of hundred-and-ten-degree heat hit them.

“Jeez, did you accidentally open the door to hell?” Jane said. “I don’t need to smoke this badly. Get inside, get inside, get inside.” She shoved him inside and closed the door. “That’s heinous. Why would someone live in this climate?”

“I’m confused,” Charlie said. “Did you start smoking again or not?”

“I didn’t really,” Jane said. “I just have one when I’m really stressed out. It’s like thumbing your nose at Death. Haven’t you ever felt like doing that?”

“You have no idea,” Charlie said.

With Charlie and Jane there, they sent the hospice nurse home at night and watched Lois in four-hour shifts. Charlie gave his mother her medication, wiped her mouth, fed her what little she would take in, but by now she was mostly having sips of water or apple juice, and he listened as she lamented losing her looks and her things, as she remembered being a great beauty, the belle of the ball at parties before he was born, an object of desire, which clearly she loved more than being a wife or a mother or any of the dozen other faces she had worn in her life. Sometimes she would actually turn her attention to her son…

“I loved you as a little boy. I would take you to cafés in North Beach and everyone would just dote on you. You were so sweet. Beautiful. Both of us were.”

“I know.”

“Remember when we dumped all of the cereal out of the boxes so you could get the prize out? A little submarine, I think? Do you remember?”

“I remember, Mom.”

“We were close then.”

“Yeah, we were.”

Charlie would take her hand then and let her remember great times that they had never really had. The time had long passed for correcting facts and changing impressions.

When she exhausted herself he let her sleep, and read by a flashlight sitting in the chair at her bedside. He was there, in the middle of the night, reading a crime novel, when the door opened and a slight man of about fifty crept into the room, stopped by the door, and looked around. He wore sneakers and black jeans, a long-sleeved black T-shirt—but for the oversized wire-frame glasses, he was just short a hand grenade and a survival knife from looking like someone on a commando mission.

“Just be quiet,” Charlie said softly. “She’s sleeping.”

The little man jumped straight up about two feet and came down in a crouch. He was breathing hard and Charlie was afraid he might faint if he didn’t relax.

“It’s okay. It’s in the top drawer of that dresser over there—it’s a squash-blossom necklace. Take it.”

The little man ducked behind the door, then peeked around the edge. “You can see me?”

“Yes.” Charlie put his book down and got up from the chair, and went to the dresser.

“Oh, this is bad. This is really, really bad.”

“It’s not that bad,” Charlie said.

The little man shook his head violently. “No, it’s really bad. Look away. Look over there. I’m not here. I’m not here. You can’t see me.”

“Here it is,” Charlie said. He took the squash-blossom necklace from its velvet case in the drawer and held it up.

“What is?”

“What you’re looking for.”

“How did you know?”

“Because I do what you do. I’m a Death Merchant.”

“A what?”

Then Charlie remembered that Minty Fresh said he had coined the term, so maybe only the Death Merchants in San Francisco knew it. “I collect soul vessels.”

“No, you don’t. You can’t see me. You can’t see me. Sleep. Sleep.” The little man was waving his hands up and down in the air like he was drawing a curtain of deception before him, or possibly clearing spiderwebs out of the room.

“These are not the droids you seek,” Charlie said, grinning.

“What?”

“You don’t have Jedi powers, you git. Just take the necklace.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Come with me,” Charlie said. “It’s time for my sister to watch her anyway.” He led the little guy out of his mother’s room into the living room. They stood by the front window, looking at the sun coming up and casting shadows of the broken teeth of the red rock mountains around them. “What’s your name?”

“Vern. Vern Glover.”

“I’m Charlie. Nice to meet you. How long does she have, Vern?”

“What do you mean?”

“How long on your calendar. How many days were left?”

“How do you know about that?”

“I told you. I do what you do. I can see you. I can see that necklace glowing red. I know what you are.”

“But you can’t. The Great Big Book says that horrible Forces of Darkness will rise if I talk to you.”

“See this cut over my ear, Vern?”

Vern nodded.

“Forces of Darkness. Fuck ’em. Fuck the Forces of Darkness, Vern. How long does my mother have?”

“It’s your mother? I’m sorry, Charlie. She has two more days.”

“Okay,” Charlie said, nodding. “Then we’d better go get a doughnut.”

“Pardon?”

“Doughnut! Doughnut! You like doughnuts, don’t you?”

“Yes, but why?”

“Because the continuance of human existence as we know it depends on us having doughnuts together.”

“Really?” Vern’s eyes went wide.

“No, not really. I’m just fucking with you.” Charlie put his arm around Vern’s shoulder. “But let’s go get one anyway. I’ll wake my sister for her watch.”

Charlie called home from his mobile phone to check on Sophie. Then, satisfied she was safe, he returned to the booth at Dunkin’ Donuts, where Vern and a cruller were waiting for him. Vern had taken off his stocking cap and had a wild mop of silver gray hair over large, aviator-frame glasses that made him look like a tan and wiry mad scientist.