Stranger

Thumbs-up. “Awesome.”

I kissed his shoulder again, then patted it. I pulled the envelope from my pocket and handed it to him. “This is for you. Don’t look at it now. That’s tacky.”

He gave me a scornful look. “I know that.”

“And next time, negotiate ahead of time,” I told him as I headed for the door. “Get the money for additional time in advance. Excuse yourself to go to the bathroom to count it so you’re not getting scammed.”

He turned the envelope over and over in his hands. “Won’t they think it’s rude?”

“The ones who do this a lot will expect it. The ones who are new won’t know any different. Watch out for yourself, Jack. Even women can be pricks.”

He nodded. “Sure. Okay. Next time.”

His voice stopped me at the door. “Grace?”

I turned. “Hmm?”

“Will there be a next time?”

I gave him a thumbs-up. Jack smiled.

Awesome.

Chapter 05

The call came as soon as I got home, patched through to my cell from the answering service. I returned the message at once.

“Hi. Miss Frawley. It’s my dad. He’s gone.” I heard Dan Stewart swallow hard as if against tears. “I’m sorry to call after hours, but the message said to call at any time, and we need to make arrangements.”

I never fail to be touched and amazed at the courtesy of those who have just lost someone they love. It’s easy to be rude when you’re being slain by grief. Dan Stewart wasn’t rude. In fact, he was bending over himself to be polite.

“It’s not a problem at all. It’s what I’m here for. Where did your father pass away?”

“At the hospital. My mom was with him. I wasn’t here, I was at home.”

I recognized the tone of shock. The need to explain. It’s my job to be smart for those whom grief has made temporarily stupid. I helped him through the order of things and made arrangements to meet the family first thing in the morning.

Since I was already home, I called Jared to have him pick up the body from the hospital while I stayed to let in the chevra kadisha. They’d be responsible for preparing the deceased for burial according to Jewish law, and their tasks included washing, praying over and dressing the body. At least one would stay to watch over the body, another Jewish custom.

An hour later Jared had come and gone and Syd Kadushin was knocking at the back door. He shook my hand and offered me a peppermint the way he always did, but when I let him into the dark hall, he was all business. He went right away to the embalming room.

The door locked automatically behind me as I watched the last arriving member go downstairs. The security precaution always made me feel better. Frawley and Sons had never had a problem with vandalism, though at Halloween we sometimes had more than our share of ring and runs at the door. Still, knowing that the downstairs would be locked up after the chevra kadisha left made me feel better about being so far away from the front door in my third-floor apartment.

I took the narrow back stairs that had once been for the servants. The large front staircase leading to the second floor was for clients and traffic to the offices upstairs. The back stairs led all the way to the third floor.

My parents had lived here with Craig and Hannah until just before I was born. Then, the third floor had been a series of rooms connecting to a narrow hallway down the center of the attic. Sloping ceilings had made some of the bedrooms small and cramped, and the kitchen was a galley-style space inadequate for a growing family, according to my mom. It had stayed empty for years after my parents moved out.

The summer of my internship, before Ben and I had ended in disaster, he’d worked in construction. With the help of our friends, a bunch of pizzas and some beer, we’d spent a few weeks remodeling. We’d knocked out the walls, creating an open space for the living and dining areas. The sloping ceilings toward the back of the house didn’t matter with a bedroom large enough for a king-size bed and a love seat, and the bathroom had been expanded, too. Unfortunately, summer had ended, along with my relationship with Ben…and so had the remodeling.

The apartment was nice, but unfinished, and every time I thought about buying new appliances to replace the harvest-gold relics from the 1970s, or replacing moldings, I remembered all those things cost money better spent on improvements to the rest of the home or the business of my social life. It was a matter of priorities.

Despite its lack of luxury, the apartment was mine. If I wanted to have friends over, I had plenty of room for them, if not enough chairs. And it was quiet, of course. Nobody below me making noise, not even the whisper of voices floating up through the heating vents.

Lots of people are superstitious about places where the dead rest. I know a lot of my friends are creeped out by the fact that at any time I might have corpses in my basement. Inevitably when new acquaintances discover my profession, I’m asked about “weird” things happening, or if I’ve ever been scared to live above the dead.

What nobody thinks about is that people don’t die in a funeral home. By the time they come to me, the circumstances of their passing have already occurred. All I get is the mortal remains. Nothing left of the soul, if there exists such a thing. There’s no reason for a spirit to haunt a funeral home, or a cemetery, for that matter, because by the time the body reaches those places, whatever happened to the soul is already done.

Not that you can convince most people of that. The dead, who can do nothing, cause no harm, who don’t breathe or eat or sleep, don’t shit or screw, freak people right the fuck out.

After my date with Jack I was tired enough to take a long, hot shower. I deep conditioned my hair and shaved every stray, offensive hair I could. I loofahed, moisturized and steam-cleaned my pores and when I was done, I put on my favorite flannel sleep pants and my soft, faded Dead Milkmen T-shirt and curled up on my sofa with the TV remote, the latest doorstop-size novel I was reading and a pot of tea. I was by myself.

Dammit, I liked it that way.

Didn’t I?

I clicked off the TV and went to the bathroom. Too much tea. I pondered my eyebrows in the mirror, decided they could use a tweeze and spent ten minutes wincing and sneezing as I plucked.

It was too late to call any of my friends. I was still alone. Nobody to answer to, that was me. That was an advantage to having a real boyfriend, but then again, that had its own price, and one more steep than what Jack charged to make me happy.