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I pushed the edges of the bag away from the body and took my first look at my newest client.
His name was Rylan and he used to be my neighbor.
Unfortunately, he was axed to death.
“Since when did he start looking all attractive and shit?” she asked, looking at the dead man on the table. “Didn’t he used to look like that creepy guy next door that you didn’t ever want your children talking to?”
“Beards make everything better,” I told her. “Do you remember that guy from church camp in the tenth grade that was always weirding all the girls out that I told you about? And then when I went back the next year, he had a beard and all of a sudden he was attractive?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “I also don’t think that’s fair. You should be able to know what you’re getting. I mean, if he ever married, and then shaved his face, his wife would go from having a ten to having a four.”
“The same can be said for women that put makeup on, color their hair, and wear push up bras,” I pointed out.
She sighed. “That’s true. But I can’t help the way I am.”
“True,” I snickered. “You’re just going to have to sleep in your makeup, so your man never knows that you have freckles.”
She rolled her eyes. “One time just to see how well I could hide them. And you’ll never let me live it down.”
Turner was a cosmetologist as well as my accountant, manager, and overall go-to girl that one needed when they were running a successful business on their own.
I, on the other hand, was a mortician.
Though I could do the makeup and the hair, as well as all that other fun stuff and not so fun stuff that included me being at my desk for more than an hour, I didn’t have the time.
Not lately, anyway, with my business taking off.
Ten years ago, I was handed Bear Bottom Funeral Home as a ‘take care of this place. I might have a use for it’ kind of thing from my father. Now, I’d made this place into a successful business that people from all around came to because they liked the aesthetics.
Though, my business taking off also coincided with a professional football player’s son having his services at my place of business as well. Now everyone in a fifty-mile radius wanted to be buried by me when the time was right.
“Fuck you,” Turner grumbled. “You never have to put on makeup. That’s your problem. You don’t realize how much it helps the people that need it.”
Tired of an old argument that always gets us nowhere fast—because telling Turner she was beautiful when she was dead set on thinking she wasn’t was impossible—I changed the subject.
“How’d your date go last night?” I wondered.
Turner immediately sighed. “I got pulled over by a police officer and got a ticket before I even got there.”
“That sucks,” I offered. “Did you at least deserve it?”
She nodded. “I did. But the cop was a dick.”
I doubted that.
“Who was it?” I wondered.
I knew most of the cops in this county seeing as I knew Ezekiel McGrew, and as much as I tried to avoid the man, I still ended up knowing everybody that he knew.
“I didn’t get his name. I was late for that date, and I just took the ticket and ran,” she explained.
“What did he look like?” I asked, bending over to get a better look at the wound on the man’s chest that we were about to start working on.
“I don’t understand the purpose of embalming,” Turner grumbled. “I mean, what’s the point? They’re going to rot anyway. They’re being buried. What’s the point of preserving them?”
I looked over at my friend and snorted.
“Embalming allows people time,” I murmured, poking the wound with my gloved finger. “They can take as much time as they need to plan the funeral, select a burial site, grieve. Whatever they want, it gives them the leeway. And you’re right, they do eventually rot, and some people still choose to bury without embalming because it does cost money.”
“I want to be cremated.” She paused. “Actually, I want to be put onto a floating pyre, pushed out in the middle of a lake, and have flaming arrows shot at me from the bank. Then I want people to watch my body burn for how ever many hours that it takes.”
I looked up at my friend. “That’s why we’re friends. I want that, too.”
Turner grinned, then that grin became calculating.
“Who did you have sex with last night, Jubilee?”
My mouth fell open.
“How do you know that I had sex?” I blurted.
Too late, I realized my mistake.
I should’ve denied. If I’d denied, then she might’ve laughed it off and gone on about her business.
Unfortunately, my knee-jerk reaction had been to blurt out the words instead of thinking about how they would sound when they came out of my mouth.
