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“You need to get comfor
table with death.”
“Nobody is comfortable with death,” I argue.
“I am. Don’t you see? This is proof that we all get what’s coming to us, and it’s so fucking beautiful, don’t you think?”
My mouth hangs open. I don’t know what to think.
Ann pulls her hand from mine. “Jesus. You’re as white as a ghost. Don’t take everything so seriously.” Her voice is flustered. “I’m just kidding.”
“Ethan’s parents are the beneficiaries of his life insurance policy. If he passed, I’d get nothing.”
“Is that what’s bothering you?” she asks, and she sort of half-laughs, almost mockingly.
“No, not really.”
“Good.” Her lips press to one another. I can’t take my eyes off of them and I hate myself for it. “That just means they’d all have to die together.”
She looks like she’s joking. But I can’t be sure she is.
“YOU DIDN’T KNOW HIM, did you?” a booming voice asks. Ann is up front, near the casket, speaking to the family, and I am standing at the door pretending to study all the pamphlets. A fish out of water. I’m ready to get out of here. My plus one, however, seems to feed off the attention. They hang around her like moths, so much so that I was desperate to break away. Everyone tells her how wonderful it was that she took time out of her busy schedule to pay her respects. They say it shows her true character. She beams. She’s in her element. I feel like a hunted animal, banished to the outskirts.
“I’ll take that as a no,” the voice says, and it’s then that I realize he is speaking to me. When I turn, a man in a suit and tie, both of which are about two sizes too big, is peering down at me. “You’re a faker.”
“And you? What are you? The doorman?”
“Ah. Funny,” he remarks, and when he smiles, the deep lines around his eyes crinkle. “No, just a friend.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and balances on his heel and still he towers over me. His green eyes search mine, for what I’m not sure. For a soul, or perhaps just a response. I make a point to focus on the gold flecks in his eyes just so I don’t get lost. He extends his hand, and for a second, or maybe an eternity, it’s suspended in the air between us, just hanging. “I’m Chet.”
“I’m the friend of a friend.”
He glances toward the front of the funeral home. “Are you coming by the house?”
“Me.” A pause. Then, I shake my head and tell him decisively, “no.”
“That’s too bad.”
“I don’t like funerals,” I say, because—nerves.
“There’s food.”
“That I do like.”
He laughs. It’s a deep and genuine laugh, and I get the sense that most things about him are that way, and that he’s the kind of guy you shouldn’t walk away from. You should run.
Eventually, Ann joins us. “Chet,” I say. “This is Ann.”
“It’s a pleasure,” he says. They shake hands. I don’t know if he knows who Ann Banks is. If he does, he doesn’t say, and his expression gives nothing away.
“So, you’re really not coming by the house?”
I shake my head. He looks from me to Ann and back. She doesn’t notice. She’s scrolling her phone. Ann doesn’t care for Chet, and she isn’t very good at hiding it. When I introduced them, she shook his hand with the kind of look in her eye that said she planned to tell me all about it later.
Meanwhile, he seems oblivious. Like he couldn’t care less about beating a dead horse. He doesn’t know her, clearly. “How will I see you again?”
“I’m married,” I say. “And this is a small town.”
“Yeah, well,” he says. “Exactly—and I’m down a friend.”
