Page 5 of Cherry Picking

There’s Gerald, sixty-three, who’s been around since my dad was still in school and who refers to every deceased person as “the guest” regardless of context—including the time he knocked one off a gurney and said, quietly, The guest has had a fall.

Gerald doesn’t believe in urgency or small talk. Gerald does believe, deeply and without irony, in the restorative properties of room-temperature soup, which he eats at his desk every single day at 11:45 a.m. from a thermos that has never once been washed.

Gerald threw his back out on Thursday, bending over to pick up a pen he’d dropped. He’s currently at home doing whatever Gerald does when he isn’t here, which I’ve genuinely never thought about before.

Then there’s Tomás, whom I genuinely adore despite his general intensity. He owns a tattoo studio on Charleston and even gave me an artist’s discount on my last piece of flash, so I’m not about to start questioning his methods now.

Phil is somewhere in his fifties—though his precise age remains a mystery even to himself. He manages the website, our social media presence, and what my father optimistically refers to as “community outreach.” He has a penchant for ordering things we definitely don’t need.

Despite having two actual artists on the payroll, Phil was the one who designed our logo. I’ve stared at it nearly every single day for eight years, and I still can’t quite decipher the geometry. There’s a central shape that could be a dove and a skeletal hand depending on how the light hits the glass.

It is uniquely terrifying and objectively terrible in equal measure.

And, of course, there’s my father, Ray Sutton. He named this place Sutton & Sons, despite having exactly one daughter and zero sons, because—as he solemnly informed me—it sounded more established.

He’s the best funeral director I’ve ever met, which is a bizarre thing to excel at, but he truly is. People arrive on our doorstep in the absolute worst moments of their lives, and he possesses a rare ability to make those moments feel bearable.

I’ve witnessed it a hundred times. He sits with grieving families and listens as if he has nowhere else to be, making it his only mission to help them navigate the messy feelings of a final goodbye.

I’ve spent the better part of my twenty-four years wondering if that empathy is a natural gift or a skill he’s had to build over time. I still don’t have a definitive answer.

By ten in the morning, the corners of the plot are perfectly square, and Tomás and I have retreated to the funeral home. The foyer carpet is a stubborn institutional beige that has weathered three decades of heavy foot traffic, the air smelling faintly of lilies and floor wax.

Tomás disappears to check on the status of his sourdough via a remarkably terse phone call to his roommate, the outcome of which appears to be a disaster. I don’t have the energy to listen to his ensuing rant, so I head toward the back to find my dad in his office.

Inside, the room is an array of neat folders and stacked invoices. There’s a single framed photo of my mother on the desk from a lifetime before I was born, and a bowl of matchboxes he’s collected over the years.

He’s on the phone when I knock on the half-open door, but he waves me in regardless and holds up two fingers. I take the cue and sink into the corner chair. Sitting there in the quiet, I catch myself wondering if being twenty-four is always meant to feel this way.

It’s a heavy kind of math to do on a Saturday.

My student loan payment cleared on the first of the month, a relentless invoice for a degree I’m currently using to label guest books. After rent and groceries and the minimum on the card I reserve for emergencies, I had enough money left for exactly (1) special treat.

This month, the indulgence was a candle that allegedly smells like petrichor. Last month, it was the flash tattoo on my wrist. I’m building a life out of small, expensive comforts while I wait for something real to start.

I have a fine arts degree from UNLV that I completed two years ago, and which currently decorates exactly one wall of my apartment. In the sense that the diploma is there, and also decorates zero careers, in the sense that I work here.

Not that I don’t like working here. Despite what my degree implies, I appreciate how straightforward the work is. While it doesn’t demand much imagination, there’s a real satisfaction in knowing we’re doing something meaningful, and I like that everyone here has a clear role to play.

I’ve grown fond of Gerald and his trusty thermos, Tomás and his snark, and even Phil—terrible logo aside. But I admire my dad most of all, mainly for his dedication to helping others and the deep pride he finds in fixing their problems.

All in all, it’s not a bad gig. I just wish it paid a little better.

“Sorry,” my dad says, finally setting the phone down. “You get out there okay?”

“We’re done with the dig.”

“Good.” He opens the folder on his desk. “Maxwell family. The father, Murphy, had a stroke about eight months ago. His late son, Zigmund, was caring for him. He was in a car accident on Halloween. They think he didn’t see the stop sign.”

I swallow thickly. “Shit.”

“Yeah,” my dad replies solemnly. “Murphy’s a wheelchair user, and the ground near the Maxwell plot runs uneven on the east side. We’ll need to set up on the approach from the main walk.” He makes a note. “His other son is handling the financial stuff. We’re fitting this one in as a favor to Danny, who’s managing the logistics.”

Danny Reyes owns the medical supply shop two blocks down from here. He and my father have been routing business to each other for as long as I can remember, which is how small operations survive in this city.

I’ve known him since I was small enough to spin on his showroom stools while he and my dad talked shop. He always keeps a bowl of butterscotch candies on his counter. I once made the mistake of eating three handfuls on an empty stomach and puked them right back up in the parking lot.

“Why is Danny managing the logistics?” I ask.