Extreme Vinyl Café

by Stuart McLean

  Two minutes later Dave walked into his friend Kenny Wong’s café. Wong’s Scottish Meat Pies.

  Kenny was sitting at his cluttered desk, in the middle of the restaurant. He looked up when Dave came in. “Hey,” he said. “Dorothy called. I’m just working on my list.”

  He leaned over his desk and pushed a piece of paper along the countertop. “So far I have ‘The Chicken Dance’ and ‘The Beer Barrel Polka.’”

  Morley was standing in front of the stove, working on a big pot of chili.

  “It’s for the wake,” she said when Dave walked in the back door. “I have it all worked out. We are going to play ‘dead teen’ songs. ‘Leader of the Pack.’ ‘Last Kiss.’ And ‘Tell Laura I Love Her.’ Unless, of course, you die in a snowstorm looking for a lost horse. Then we’ll play the one by Michael Murphy.”

  “‘Wildfire,’” said Dave. “Who called?”

  “Everyone,” said Morley.

  Later that night, as they were lying in bed, Dave dropped his book on the floor, pushed himself up on an elbow and said, “Can I ask you something? Seriously.”

  Morley was reading a design magazine. She rested the magazine on her chest. Dave said, “If you died … what am I supposed to do? Do you want to be buried? Or what?”

  Morley said, “Cremated. After that I don’t care. Put me out with the recycling.”

  “I’m serious,” said Dave.

  Morley turned her head and looked at him. “Me too,” she said. She picked up her magazine. “I love this magazine,” she said.

  Dave dropped in on Dorothy the next morning, before he opened his store.

  “If I was going to be truthful,” he said to Dorothy, “if I was going to be perfectly and totally honest, I want to be buried with a flashlight and a cellphone.”

  “Just in case?” said Dorothy.

  “Well … it happens,” said Dave. Then, into the silence, the two of them staring at each other, he added two small words: “Or frozen.”

  “Just in case,” said Dorothy.

  “Exactly,” said Dave.

  Dave went to Kenny’s for lunch. He sat on his usual stool, at the end of the counter, by Kenny’s desk.

  “If I die—” said Dave, chasing a snow pea around his plate with his chopsticks.

  “When you die,” said Kenny.

  “Whatever,” said Dave. “If I die. When I die. What’s the difference?”

  “Acceptance,” said Kenny.

  Dave was in a state, no doubt about it. And the state, as states tend to, was intensifying. He was talking to pretty much everyone about this. On the weekend he even talked to Mary Turlington. Or more to the point, Mary talked to him. They bumped into each other in the grocery store, by the yoghurt.

  Dave was standing in front of the dairy cooler, feeling overwhelmed, when Mary breezed in and began plucking up containers of yoghurt.

  “Lactose free, 2 percent,” said Mary without even saying hello.

  “Thanks,” said Dave, squinting at the tub she handed him. How could she possibly know more about his family’s fridge than he did?

  Mary changed gears. “I made our arrangements years ago,” she said.

  Dave was looking for more of the lactose-free yoghurt.

  Mary said, “Over there.” Then she said, “You know the three most important things about burial.”

  Dave stared at her, blankly.

  Mary said, “Location, location, location.” Then she said, “Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a prime gravesite?”

  “Prime?” said Dave. Okay, he had forgotten about the yoghurt.

  “Mature trees. Good landscaping. I looked for months. It’s like buying a second property.”

  Mary was piling a staggering selection of yoghurt into her cart, plucking the containers off the shelf like she was picking apples.

  “Bert had his heart set on a cottage. But I ran the numbers … a plot is a far better investment. Do you want me to hook you up with my funeral director?”

  Dave looked horrified. “No,” he said. “No. No. No.”

  He was holding his hands in front of his chest and actually backing away from her.

  Mary took a hard look at him and shook her head.

  “It’s coming,” she said. “You can’t stop it. And you shouldn’t fear it. It’s simple biology. Something we all should come to terms with.”

  Dave eats lunch at Kenny’s café a couple of days a week.

  “If I die,” said Dave one lunchtime, “I always thought it would be nice to be buried, somewhere, maybe … I don’t know. I haven’t thought about this a lot. But somewhere with trees and squirrels maybe, or maybe a rabbit or something. So it would be nice, you know, for people who visit. A nice place. With animals.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Kenny. Kenny was at his desk, working on a camera with a small screwdriver.

  Kenny didn’t look up. He said, “Like a petting zoo.”

  “Not like the goldfish,” said Dave.

  “What?” said Kenny.

  Kenny put down the screwdriver and looked at Dave for the first time.

  “Morley is going to have me cremated and then she is going to flush me down the toilet. Like the goldfish.”

  Kenny said, “You had the goldfish cremated?”

  Mary left a message on the record-store phone. A name. And a phone number. And that’s how Dave ended up, sitting, like a supplicant, across the large mahogany desk belonging to Mr. Lionel Gallop—owner, director and sole employee of the Sunshine Funeral Home.

  “There is much to consider,” said Mr. Gallop. “Choices must be made. And if you don’t make them, someone else will.”

  It was as if he knew about Aunt Ginger and “The Flight of the Bumblebee.”

  Then Mr. Gallop leaned forward and lowered his voice.

  “It’s not unusual,” he said, “to find boxes of ashes stacked on funeral parlour shelves. Boxes that are never collected.”

  He took Dave to see the cemetery a week later. Dave pointed to a treed knoll in a shady corner.

  “There, maybe?” said Dave.

  Mr. Gallop laughed. “Oh we couldn’t afford that, I’m afraid.”

  He took Dave’s elbow and steered him away from the little knoll. They walked along the path without saying anything, past a stand of leafy maples, around some flower beds, until they came to a stretch of hard, dusty grass that looked like an abandoned playground. Mr. Gallop smiled and held his arm out.

  “Maybe here,” he said.

  With each passing minute Dave was becoming more and more certain he would be spending eternity on a shelf of the Sunshine Funeral Home. Until, of course, the shelf was full, and Mr. Gallop had to make room for others.

  “Are there really,” said Dave, “uhh …”

  “Uncollected?” said Mr. Gallop. “Yes. That does happen. We hold them for as long as we can. After twenty-five years we give them to the city.”

  “To the city?” said Dave.

  “They’re put in a common grave.” Mr. Gallop was holding his hands in front of him. “But with the utmost dignity.”

  He looked sad. Prayerful. Lost in thought.

  Dave stood beside him, waiting.

  After a moment Mr. Gallop turned abruptly and smiled. “Hopefully,” he said, “if you make good choices, if you make the right choices, in the years that come, you will be able to … rest in peace.”

  He nodded his head and made a little mewing sound.

  “Mmm?”

  And so, Dave bought a coffin. He had to do something. He didn’t see any plots he liked, and he had to act. He had to make a choice.

  The coffin was not altogether a bad decision. It was neither the most expensive nor the cheapest. It was pine, but red pine—a coffin that seemed to fit his station in the world.

  “A good choice,” said Mr. Gallop. “A reasonable beginning.”

  Mr. Gallop shook Dave’s hand and gave him a booklet with a list of things that he should think about.

  “There’s so much t
o decide,” said Mr. Gallop, his arm on Dave’s shoulder. “Flowers. The, uh, venue. Music.”

  “That’s how this all began,” said Dave.

  “The memorial,” said Mr. Gallop, oblivious. “Epitaph, printed materials for the booklets, slides, collages.” He waved his hand in the air. “The outfit—for the deceased.”

  “That’s me,” said Dave.

  “Announcements,” said Mr. Gallop, nodding. “And, of course, the eulogy.”

  “The eulogy?” said Dave.

  “It’s much, much more than a way of saying farewell,” said Mr. Gallop. “If it’s done with the right touch, it can bring the person to life. Uh. In the minds of the beloved.”

  Dave began his eulogy the next day at lunch. He got a pad of lined paper and worked on it at the kitchen table.

  He wrote his name at the top of the page. Centred. Then he skipped a line and wrote: He is…. He stared at the words; then he crumpled the paper and threw it at the garbage.

  He missed.

  He took another piece of paper and wrote his name at the top again. This time, under it, he wrote: He was….

  He stared at that. It seemed like tempting the fates. He crumpled the second page and threw it at the garbage.

  He is…. He was…. Someone else could change the tense.

  He was … one of the most—Dave’s pen hovered—one of the most.… He crumpled that page and bounced it off the rim of the garbage. He started again.

  Born in the village of Big Narrows, son of Charlie and Margaret and one of the most … one of the most … Forgiving? Generous? Remarkable? Humble? … humble.

  He was just finishing up the first page when the doorbell rang. Two guys in blue coveralls were standing on the stoop. They looked like roofers. The bigger guy did the talking.

  “We got your coffin,” said the bigger guy.

  There had been some sort of misunderstanding.

  “There’s been a misunderstanding,” said Dave.

  “Where do you want your coffin?” said the big guy.

  It hadn’t occurred to Dave he would be taking delivery of the coffin.

  “Who did you think was going to get it?” said the big guy.

  Dave had them put the coffin in the garage. He covered it with blankets. Thank God no one was home.

  In his rush to hide his final resting place, Dave had left his eulogy on the kitchen table. By the time he remembered it, he was back at work, and Stephanie, home for study week, was reading it in disbelief.

  “Who wrote this crud?” she said at supper, waving the eulogy in the air. “They obviously never met you.”

  “It’s nothing,” said Dave.

  He managed to get the coffin to the record store before anyone saw it.

  There is a room over the store where Dave keeps stuff— souvenirs mostly, paper from the days when he worked in the concert business. There are handwritten set lists, notes, letters, snapshots and some stage clothes. All manner of stuff. It’s an amazing collection of memorabilia, assembled partly for sentimental reasons, but mostly because Dave could never bear to throw anything out. It never occurred to him while he was squirrelling the stuff away that it would be valuable one day.

  It is how he augments his living. He trades and sells pieces when he needs serious money, or if someone desperately wants something.

  He figured he could keep the coffin upstairs with his collection until he figured out what to do with it.

  But you try getting a coffin up a flight of stairs by yourself. And tell me who you would call to help if you didn’t want to be explaining yourself for the next six months. So Dave humped his coffin to the back of his store, covered it with blankets and put some crates of records on top of it.

  And then one rainy afternoon in March, in the middle of a week of rainy afternoons, a week when no one had been in the store all day, Dave found himself looking at the blanket-covered coffin wondering what it would be like to be inside.

  Not many people wonder about things like that.

  Fewer have an opportunity to find out.

  Once the thought had entered Dave’s mind, he couldn’t shake it.

  The store had been pretty much empty all week.

  He had way too much time on his hands.

  He removed the milk crates of records and piled them on the floor. He ran his hand over the shiny coffin. It was actually a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. A pine box to be sure, but a pine box with the lustre of ebony.

  He was about to climb in—just for a second, just to see— when it occurred to him that it would hardly be an accurate experience, lying there in his comfy sweater and cords. Surely, when he was laid out, it would be a more formal thing. He went upstairs. There was a jacket up there that once belonged to Eric Clapton. There was, in fact, a whole rack of clothing. A shirt Frank Sinatra Jr. had left in a dressing room in the Poconos. A tie that had once belonged to Paul Anka. He slipped off his sweater and put on the shirt, the tie and Eric’s jacket.

  And then he spotted Alice Cooper’s makeup kit.

  A job worth doing, as his father-in-law, Roy, used to say, is worth doing properly.

  He powdered his face. He looked in the mirror. He looked great—which is to say, he looked dead.

  He went downstairs. He ran back upstairs, grabbed some candles and then ran back downstairs.

  He lifted the lid of the coffin and propped it up, checking the hinge to make sure it wouldn’t slam shut. He lit the candles. He dimmed the lights. He put on some music. Etta James. “At Last.”

  Then he crawled into the box. Tumbled into it actually, bum first.

  There was not as much room in there as you might think. He had to squirm around awkwardly to arrange himself. In fact, it was cramped. But the silk lining was smooth and soft, and there was a nice layer of padding between him and the bottom of the casket.

  Not bad, thought Dave. Quite comfortable, actually. Peaceful even. Dave folded his arms over his chest. He closed his eyes.

  He wasn’t sound asleep, but he wasn’t wide awake either. He was somewhere in that foggy world between dreams and thought, lying in his coffin, the candles flickering at each of the corners, trying to get in touch with eternity, when the front door opened, and someone walked into the record store.

  Dave thought he had locked the door. He was sure he had locked the door.

  “Hello,” said a voice.

  Apparently he had not.

  He didn’t move a muscle.

  “Hello,” called the voice again.

  It was a woman’s voice. And it sounded familiar.

  “David,” it said, “are you here?”

  It almost sounded like Mary Turlington.

  That was ridiculous. Mary Turlington had never been in Dave’s store. Uptight and sanctimonious Mary Turlington wasn’t interested in anything “used.” Mary was suspicious of used goods. She preferred reproductions to antiques.

  But that very morning Mary had received a letter informing her that there was room opening up at the graveyard where she had bought her plot. It hadn’t occurred to her to wonder exactly how room would open up at a cemetery. The only thing that mattered was that Dave had an overly dramatic approach to death and he had to get over it.

  Mary was on a mission. She had dragged herself to the store for Morley’s sake. She was going to help this silly man grow up and accept his mortality. She was going to get him organized. Death was just another aspect of the housekeeping of life. You pay your bills, you buy groceries, you mow the lawn—and you make your funeral arrangements.

  She actually hadn’t meant to go in, however.

  Damn, she thought as she went through the door, I was going to call him.

  It smelled funny in there—like incense. Or worse. There was suspicious music playing. The type of music that people play when they are up to no good. And it was dark.

  The place was giving her the creeps.

  “David,” she called. Where was he? And what did he do in this dusty, dark shop all day—by himse
lf?

  “David? Are you here?”

  Mary hesitated by the door and then stepped in. What could he be doing back there that he couldn’t do out in the open?

  She caught sight of the candles.

  Just the sort of childish display she would expect of Dave. Against her better judgment, she kept going.

  Dave was lying stiffly in the coffin. He was thinking that if he were very quiet, if he didn’t move a muscle, Mary would assume that the shop was empty. And leave.

  Blessed mother of Jesus. Her footsteps were getting closer and closer.

  Then they stopped abruptly.

  As Mary moved further into the store, her eyes adjusted to the gloom.

  “Blessed mother of Jesus,” said Mary. It wasn’t a mannequin in the coffin. It was a body.

  Ohmigod, thought Dave.

  “Ohmigod,” said Mary.

  Every nerve ending in Mary’s brain told her to get out of there. And to get out of there fast. But she couldn’t help herself. She was drawn toward the casket.

  Don’t move, thought Dave. Don’t move a muscle.

  He lay there for an eternity.

  But eventually he couldn’t help himself.

  Very slowly and very carefully, Dave opened one eye.

  Unfortunately it was the eye Mary happened to be staring at.

  Maybe if she had recognized Dave things would have worked out differently. But she didn’t recognize Dave. It was dark in there, and he was made up. And he was wearing a tie, for heaven’s sake.

  So Mary stumbled back, her heart pounding, watching as the body rose up and struggled clumsily out of the casket like a zombie in a horror movie.

  Then the body said, “Hello, Mary.”

  This is how it ends? thought Mary. Zombies?

  Then she hit the ground.

  The letter from Stephanie arrived the following week.

  Dear Dad,

  Dave got it at lunchtime. He showed it to Morley after supper.

  “Did you tell her to write this?” asked Dave.

  “No,” said Morley. “I didn’t.”

  Dear Dad,

  Mom told me you have been worried about dying.

  She told me that’s why you were writing your eulogy. I want to apologize for making fun of you. I am sorry I laughed at you. I am sorry I made fun of it.

  When Paula’s dad died, she had to talk at his funeral. I started wondering what I would say if I had to talk at yours.