by Paul Slatter
For all Sebastian had asked for as a final request, which his friend and lawyer Samuel Gadot had read aloud at the reading of the will to anyone who was still listening, were these words which he asked kindly for all who knew him well to abide to.
‘I've never liked funerals, ghastly affairs in my eyes, and I'm not going to subject anyone to mine. So, keeping this in mind: please, I ask—no service, no funeral, no ceremony, for me. If you have tears please shed them, yes, and say your goodbyes in a place of your choosing and with those tears wherever you are, know I will be with you. I'm gone and I bid you farewell with these words.’ But in those words were a ‘get out’ clause for Chendrill because although the time and date for Sebastian's quiet lonely cremation was a guarded secret, it was here Chendrill had chosen to say his thanks and his goodbyes to a man who had become a true friend.
The undertaker who dressed in black for a living stepped out from the back and told Chendrill about the backlog he had today in the crematorium because one of the burners was down—when in reality he'd been waiting for the guy who loaded the corpses into it to come back from lunch. It being easier to watch a soap on TV instead of doing his job. The guy in his sixties, wearing one of the two black suits bought for him each year by a wife whom he hated because she was a bitch. The man standing there in the reception with his head down feeling fine inside but looking morose for no other reason other than that's what he did.
Chendrill asked him straight, “What are we waiting for?”
It was a good question. The undertaker looked up at him solemnly, then he turned, walked to, and held open the doors that led out back to the area where people didn’t like to go. They reached the ovens, the man asking respectfully for Chendrill to wait—the floor unfinished in the corridor, the place stinking of formaldehyde and the sweet sickly stench that comes from death.
A minute later, the kid who was late back from lunch for no other reason than he was lazy came backwards through a door, pushing a gurney that carried a shrouded corpse. Reaching Chendrill he stopped, looked at him and, pulling out his phone, began texting.
“Is this Mr String?” asked Chendrill.
Looking up at him for a moment then nodding to the label at the foot of the gurney, the kid went straight back to his phone.
Slowly Chendrill looked away from the kid and down at Sebastian’s wrapped body.
Not taking his eyes off the screen on his phone, the kid shifted his body weight off the wall and, with one hand, lined up Sebastian's gurney with the crematorium, ready for him to slide inside.
Chendrill looked into the chamber. The burners were ready to ignite but there was ash covering its base mixed with the residue of silicone. Chendrill looked at the kid and said, “Clean this out please before you put my friend in there.”
The kid looked at him. “Sorry?”
“You need to clean the incinerator.”
The kid rolled his eyes as he finished texting, then putting his phone in the pocket of his black cover jacket he said as he began to carry on, “It's silicone, you can't get it out.”
Placing his hand on the gurney, Chendrill stopped the kid in his tracks. The last thing he needed was Sebastian's ashes mixed up with some dead woman’s tits. He said, “You need to clean it.”
The kid said it again, this time in a tone that had always worked with his mum, “You can't get it out; it's baked in. It's not policy.”
Policy? Chendrill thought, what a load of bullshit. Chendrill said, “Imagine that it was you going in there because last night you were getting all fucked on E and coke with your friends but instead knocked backed some fentanyl.”
“Wouldn’t give a shit,” the kid said.
Chendrill scoffed, then carried on saying, “Well maybe your mother would care, so, un bake it, turn on the burner, heat it up in there, open the door, and scrape it out.”
Reluctantly the kid closed the door, hit the button to ignite the burner and walked away.
Chendrill stood there alone with Sebastian. When was the last time they had a private moment? he thought, it was in the limo, but Belinda had been there. Nonetheless, it was their time.
“We can't have you mixed up with some chick who was big in the nineties, can we Sebastian?” he said.
He looked over to the door as it opened and the kid came back down, this time carrying a shovel and a metal bucket stained yellow from cigarette butts. Without a word, he shut off the burner and opened the door, blasting heat and ash out on purpose from the door’s vacuum as he did. He waited a second before lifting the shovel and scraping the silicone and ash from the bottom of the incinerator. He looked back up at Chendrill as he dropped the last of the steaming goo into the bottom of the bucket, and said, “Like I said, we're busy.”
Chendrill snapped straight back, “Yeah, well you can get busier and go get a broom, be respectful, and clean out the rest of the ash from the poor soul who you put in there last.”
“Whatever,” said the kid as he walked away, clanking the bucket against the wall as he did for effect. Reaching the door, he called out without looking back, “I’m not the one who turned up here dressed like I’m about to go on holiday.”
Cocky fuck, Chendrill thought, as he looked down at his red Hawaiian. The kid had a point. He said straight back, “If you don’t like your job, go work at McDonalds.”
Without making eye contact, the kid came back to the incinerator and stood next to Sebastian’s body lying on the gurney. Reaching in with the broom, he pulled back ash with one slow exaggerated stroke after the other, each time letting some of the remnants of the woman who’d once been so proud of her cleavage fall onto the floor. Eventually when the incinerator was clean, the kid looked up at him. Chendrill smiled and said, “Now how hard was that?”
Without a word, the kid then raised the gurney and slid Sebastian feet first inside and as he was about to shut the door, he heard Chendrill say, “I got this.”
The kid looked at him and said, “You ain’t allowed, I’ve got to do it proper.”
“Like last time?” Chendrill said as he stood there with his hand on the door waiting for the kid to now leave.
Turning, the kid began to walk away, he reached the door and was almost through when he called out, “Everyone’s an expert!”
Chendrill watched the kid disappear and the door close behind him with a slam. He reached in and gently pulled the shroud away from Sebastian’s pale and ghostly bloated face. Chendrill looked at him for a moment, Sebastian there with his eyes closed. He kissed his fingers on his right hand and gently touched them to Sebastian’s head and after stroked his hair and said, “Thank you, my friend. I will miss you.”
Chendrill closed the door tightly, and just as he’d seen the kid do earlier, he reached to the lever on the side, pulled it down, hit the button to ignite the burner, and stood there feeling the heat rise through the burners beyond the metal door and watched through the little observation window as the golden light took over.
A half hour later, he was back outside stepping through the office door with Sebastian’s ashes in a box under his arm. The lady in black who was there before was now gone. He walked up some steps and through an ornate memorial garden and headed towards his car. Then he saw her standing there to the side, under a tree, looking to him, as though she had been waiting for Chendrill all along. As he passed, she called out to him, “Sebastian thanks you for looking after him.”
Slowing, Chendrill looked over and was about to speak when he then heard her say ,“He is also thanking you for the kiss.”
Chendrill felt the hairs on his neck and arms stand on end as he stopped. He looked over at the woman standing there almost like a ghost herself and remembered Sebastian talking about her from time to time. Not wanting to move closer, he called out as it dawned on him who the woman was, “You’re the one who called—Sebastian’s friend?”
She was Sebastian’s friend indeed, if you can call someone you habitually saw and paid for inane spiritual advice in the fo
rm of a palm reading a friend. The woman sitting on a little stool at her makeshift table, outside the shoe shops on Robson Street dressed in her best gypsy clothes and holding Sebastian’s hand. Week after week turned into month after month in which Sebastian had sat and listened as she read his palm, spouting bullshit about Alan being happy and passing on Sebastian’s lover’s kind words. Sebastian, being Sebastian, seeing it all for what it was, but loving it anyway.
Without a yes or a no, the lady simply said, “He’s saying, stay away from Casper Street.”
************
Chendrill pulled out onto the main road holding onto Sebastian’s ashes in the box as he did and thought, What the fuck was that? Jesus. Fuck. That woman was creepy. Sebastian had mentioned her once or twice in the brief time they’d known each other, suggesting he should go see her, telling Chendrill how sweet she was and how she knew stuff that she shouldn’t.
But soothsayers weren’t his thing, especially ones that sat on the street with everyone passing by who’d be wondering what the big fellow was missing so much in his life that he felt the need to go sit on a little stool too small for his backside.
It wasn’t long after Chendrill headed back into town before he’d gotten two calls. The first from Sebastian’s accountant who needed a bank account number to put his money into and then ten minutes later another from the girl on the front desk at Slave who said a lady by the name of Suzy had been in and she’d been crying in the waiting room as she wanted to talk to whoever was in charge. Chendrill said, “Tell her to meet me at the same place she used to meet Sebastian.”
Chendrill was back out the door and sitting alone in the park with the sun on his back watching the road and the bench where the unlikely friends had met over the last little while. He wanted to see who was bringing her there—her loser husband or her bigger parasite loser boyfriend, and when she arrived, it was neither. The first he saw of her was her blonde hair waving in the wind as she stepped out of a taxi up at the top of the steps that led down to the park by the water. Suzy coming towards him, looking good in her signature tight blouse and stretch jeans with high heels. Moving down the steps sideways so as not to fall and holding her bag in the crux of her elbow. She moved along past the fountains where children liked to play and hit the seawall—guys discretely looking one way then the next as she passed. Chendrill standing way away, watching everything.
Five minutes later as she sat alone, he was next to her and heard her say as he sat down, “I'm sorry, do you mind. I'm waiting for someone. We always meet here.”
And Chendrill said, “I'm sorry to tell you that someone's not here anymore. He’s passed on.” Suzy looked to Chendrill as though she had not heard him properly. Then as she realized the guy wo had just sat down in the loud shirt was the person she had asked to meet, she said, “Yes, sorry, I know but it’s just hard to accept right now.”
Chendrill was too, sorry to have lost a friend, sorry to have had to sit there and not been allowed to thump out the piece of shit lawyer who knew Sebastian was about to end it all and did nothing other than invoice. “Yeah I am too,” he said as he took a deep breath.
Suzy looked at him as her eyes began to well up with tears, “So it's true, he's gone?”
“Yep,” is all Chendrill said as he looked to nothing out on the water.
“How?”
He told her everything about how promises to Sebastian were sacred and how he'd made one to his boyfriend that they'd meet again, all three of them, once the dog had died. He waited as she shed real tears, gut wrenching tears. Her head in her hands with her hair hanging at the side.
Chendrill waited and watched without offering a hand to console. Then when she was done and Suzy had pulled a small tissue from her bag and wiped her eyes and blew her nose, she surprised him by saying, “Yeah that Alan was always a selfish piece of shit.”
***************
Dan sat in his room and wondered what it was going to be like having to fend for himself once his mother had stopped crying and called a realtor. Patrick had been all over her about it since it looked like he was going to have to dust off a couple of his favourite patterned cashmere sweaters that had survived the cull. For the moment, she'd said she would wait. But Dan was wondering how long. She hadn't said, ‘It’s okay Dan if I do move I'll make sure there's a shitty little room in the basement you can live in love.’ So, from what he could tell, the computer, TV, sound system and the bench with the red vice that Sebastian had bought were heading downtown to his swanky new pad with its pictures of guys having man-sex on the bedroom ceiling—once that weirdo Mazzi Hegan got the fuck out that is.
What a strange turn of events, he thought, stealing some keys to a penthouse and a Ferrari and ending up owning both, and on top of it all he had Marshaa, voted the most beautiful woman in the world, naked in his basement bedroom sucking his cock.
Pulling his dick from her mouth, ‘Marshaa’, as she now liked to be called, said, “What's the matter, why can't you come?”
Dan looked down at her as she kneeled at the edge of her bed and noticed she'd put a couple of crusty socks from beneath the bed under her knees. He said, “It’s because my mum’s upstairs.” It wasn't—what would he care, he'd fucked almost everything in the fridge over the years with his mum upstairs, so why should having a supermodel over be any different. After all he was getting evicted soon anyway? But there were two reasons: one, he needed to go to the toilet; and the other was that there was a man looking in the window and he was carrying a hockey stick.
He said, “And there's a guy staring at me through the window.”
Marshaa stayed still for the moment and looked up at Dan. She'd seen the curtains were open in the low window but in the heat of the moment she'd forgotten to close them. Now she wondered if it was a Pap who'd followed her there and gotten lucky. She said, “Is he a Pap?”
''No, he drives a cab.”
“Has he got a camera?”
“No, a hockey stick,” Dan answered,
“Oh?” Marshaa replied, as she let go of Dan’s now semi-hard dick altogether and pulled on a t-shirt Dan had not seen for months from under the bed. She turned, looked to the man and called out through the run-down home’s basement window, “You've got the wrong address. We don't take taxis—we have chauffeurs!”
*************
It wasn’t long before Ditcon also had Chendrill in his sights after sending out the boys to look for the big guy. When they’d found him, he was talking to some lady with blonde hair over on the seawall in the park at Coal Harbour.
Stephanie pulled the car up and joined Ditcon as he watched Chendrill chatting away with the good-looking blonde. The dirty bastard, I bet he’s fucking her, Ditcon thought as he wished he had some binoculars so he could get a better look at the woman. Holding out his hand without looking back, he said, “Binoculars,” and opening the glove box, Stephanie looked inside.
“There aren’t any,” she replied.
And straight away she heard the man tut, then heard him say surprisingly without any hint of frustration or annoyance, “Well, get on the radio and have some binoculars bought to me ASAP.” Picking up her radio, Stephanie called it in and with screaming sirens and flashing lights, the binoculars made their way through red lights and traffic across town. Four minutes and forty-five seconds later, they were with him.
Ditcon took the binoculars from the cop who was good at the wheel without saying thanks, gave the man a talking to for being so fucking noisy, then followed it up with, “Now turn those lights off and get out of here.”
Ditcon smiled to Stephanie as they watched the police car pull away. He put the glass to his eyes and focussed in on the happy couple. He was right, the woman had big tits—and long legs, skinny ankles, nice face, big sunglasses on the top of her head. Chendrill was in his usual, standard issue, stupid Hawaiian—the fucking prick. He said to Stephanie, “Can you lip read?”
Stephanie gave it some thought and unless Chendrill was sitting
across from her in a bar and mouthing, ‘I want to fuck you, right now,’ the answer was no. She said, “It’s not in my skill set.”
Nodding again without looking back and taking his eyes away from the glass, he said, “We need a lip reader.” She called it in and ten minutes later they had one.
The lady got out of the police car and still shaking got into the backseat of Ditcon’s vehicle and sat next him. Ditcon looked at her—she was older and he didn’t like her shoes or her nylon dress. He asked, “You bring your own binoculars?”
She hadn’t. This was a pain. He said, “If you’re in this line of work, then you need to turn up with the right equipment. You need to keep glasses with you at all times. It’s basic police procedure.”
The woman looked to her handbag and pulled out her reading glasses. She said, “I’m a school teacher, but my son is deaf. They said it was a national emergency.”
Ditcon dropped his binoculars into his lap and looked to the lady who was a school teacher but had a kid who was deaf. What the fuck? he thought. What are these pricks doing giving him bargain basement manpower? He handed the binoculars to the lady and said, “If you’ve got a deaf kid how does he watch TV properly?” It was something he’d always wondered, same for blind kids. Then he said, “Don’t worry, there’s a guy down there in a Hawaiian. We need to know what he’s talking about and the woman with the blonde hair we need to know what she’s saying also.”
The woman lifted the binoculars to her eyes and as she did she understood what this intense man was referring to when he’d talked about glass. Because of the shirt, she found Chendrill with ease, looked at him and then at Suzy, then to Suzy’s breasts. God, they’re big, she thought—nice, the lucky girl, she liked the blouse too, the way the buttons stretched only just keeping them in. She thought about her own and how she’d done the same for her husband when she’d tried to get sexy for him sometimes in the bedroom and how when she’d got him all hot and excited and he’d licked her down there and then made love to her, she had screamed as loud as she wanted without the fear of waking her kid.
