by John Inman
“Agnes?” Deeze called out. Wyeth heard nothing but soft music. She must have had her radio on.
“Oh God,” he suddenly muttered, peering over Deeze’s shoulder.
Agnes sat at the living room window, staring out at the city she loved to watch. It was from the same vantage point where she had witnessed a relationship blossom between the two young men who would later become her only friends. Maybe she had sat there for years, watching the world gradually slide by without her, knowing she could no longer keep up with it, knowing she was really no longer a part of the world at all.
She sat upright in her doilied chair, an untouched cup of tea, grown cold and scummed over, in front of her on the windowsill. The saucer holding the teacup had two cookies jutting over the edge. The cookies were covered with ants. A pair of binoculars lay on the floor at the old lady’s feet, where they must have tumbled the moment her strength gave out. The moment death had claimed itself victor in Agnes’s long-drawn-out war of life.
Wyeth shuddered at the sight of the ants. He laid his forehead to the back of Deeze’s shirt so he wouldn’t have to look.
Deeze’s eyes were centered on the silent woman sitting in her favorite chair. “Agnes?” he said again, but Wyeth heard the resignation in his voice. Deeze knew. They both knew.
Agnes Mulroney—the irascible neighbor down the hall who in the end had turned out to be one of the most amazing women either man had ever met—was no longer listening.
Chapter Fifteen
DEEZE AND Wyeth stood over the casket, staring down at a stranger. Agnes was coifed and lipsticked and rouged until she was barely recognizable. No peach pits in her pockets. No hankies up her sleeve. The fact that her mouth was sewn shut and she wasn’t railing about one thing or another or gossiping about anyone, made her seem even less familiar. At the foot of the casket stood a tall spray of roses and carnations. On the card, if one cared to read it, could be found two names. Deeze and Wyeth. All the other flowers present were supplied by the funeral home. Those bouquets held no cards at all. They were simply for show. Like stage props. In fact, they weren’t even real. They were plastic.
Wyeth thought those artificial flowers were the saddest things he had ever seen in his life.
Deeze spotted the sadness on his lover’s face and leaned in close. “Don’t be glum about the race. I’ll sign us up for another marathon, since we missed the last one. You can outrun me then. Okay?”
Wyeth pulled a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and blew his nose. “It isn’t that. I’m just sorry is all. Sorry about Agnes, I mean.”
Deeze stroked his cheek. “I know. So am I. But death isn’t always a bad thing, Wy. It ended the woman’s suffering, at least. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
Wyeth shrugged. “I suppose.”
“You old softy,” Deeze murmured, eyeing him fondly.
Deeze turned back to stare down at the body in the casket. His mind attempted to carry his thoughts to other recent deaths, to other recent losses, but he ground his teeth and refused to go there. Despite his best efforts, a screenshot of Father Mike wormed its way into his mind: the good man lying motionless in the grass, his empty eyes staring upward, unblinking, into the pelting rain. Blindly reaching out for Wyeth’s hand, Deeze held on tight until the image faded. As if sensing Deeze’s need for him, Wyeth sidled closer until their shoulders brushed. Deeze felt better immediately.
Agnes’s funeral was scheduled for later in the day. Deeze and Wyatt, wearing their best suits, had attended viewing hours both this morning and the night before. In all that time, they were the only two mourners in attendance. No one else had shown up, even for the coffee and free cookies in the lounge in the back.
Agnes, it seemed, was as friendless in death as she had been in life. Not that Deeze was surprised. She had pissed off everybody she ever met, occasionally not excluding him and Wyeth, during her long decades of presiding over the planet with an acid wit and a conniving eye.
Still, it seemed mean-spirited for the world to ignore her death completely.
Mitchell’s Mortuary was situated downtown, six blocks from their apartment building. Deeze turned his back on the corpse and stared around at the empty chairs, neatly aligned in endlessly vacant rows, all the while trying to ignore the piped-in hymns, which after two days were beginning to grate on his nerves. He would have preferred a little ABBA to lighten the mood.
Deeze jumped when a hand landed on his shoulder. He spun around to find the funeral director standing there. The man was so pale he looked like he had been spawned in a cave and periodically dipped in bleach. Everything about him was washed out. Skin, hair, eyes, demeanor.
“May I have a word?” the mortician asked, eyeing first Wyeth, then Deeze, and finally the dead woman in the casket as if, since it concerned her as well, he might as well include her in the conversation.
“Certainly,” Deeze said. “What’s up?”
The mortician cleared his throat, clearly embarrassed, then waved his hand toward the rows of vacant seats. “Aside from you two,” he said, “as far as I know, only one other attendee plans to grace us with their presence at the funeral service.”
Deeze perked up at that. “Well, good. At least that’s one more. Who is it?”
The funeral guy had clearly lost the ability to smile long ago. It was like his lips had been slathered from a bucket of Deeze’s school paste and set on a windowsill to dry. They were unbending. “The organist,” he said. “And she works for me.” He cleared his throat again but didn’t say anything, as if the meaning should be crystal clear. Which of course it wasn’t.
“What are you trying to say?” Wyeth asked.
The mortician gave a tiny jump, as if the question surprised him. “Pall bearers, of course. We need six. Even including myself, we only have three.”
“What about the organist?”
“She’s older than the corpse. Plus she’ll be playing the organ. That’s why we call her the organist.” Unbending lips or not, apparently the funeral director could be sarcastic when the need arose.
“Oh,” Deeze said.
He studied his shoe tops for a minute, then a grin crept across his face. He reached across and took a fistful of Wyeth’s necktie, dragging him closer. “My friend and I will take care of it.”
Wyeth’s eyebrows rose. “We will?”
Deeze said, “We will,” and shot him a wink.
While Wyeth stood there looking totally confused, the mortician, for some odd reason, decided to take Deeze at his word.
“Well, good then,” he announced grandly. “I won’t worry.” And with that, he flicked an imaginary speck of dust off the edge of Agnes’s casket and sauntered off to drain another corpse, or whatever it is morticians do when they have a little downtime.
Wyeth turned to Deeze. “Huh? What just happened? What did you just promise we would do?”
Deeze grinned. “We just committed ourselves to acquiring a few pall bearers for the service. No reason we shouldn’t try filling a few seats while we’re at it.” With a maniacal glint in his eye, he rubbed his hands together. “Best get cracking. The funeral begins in two hours. Agnes is counting on us.”
“Agnes is dead.”
“Yes, well, maybe she’s counting on us in spirit, Wy. Ever think of that? We wouldn’t want to let her down, now would we?”
Wyeth opened his mouth, closed it, and then shook his head. “No, love of my life, I guess we wouldn’t. So what do you have in mind?”
Deeze first patted his heart in response to the “love of my life” remark, then started dragging Wyeth through the funeral home doors and out onto the street. Once there, Deeze cornered him with his back to a palm tree and shared his plan.
When he finished, Wyeth said, “You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Even for you, this is harebrained.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It won’t work.”
“Yes, it will.”
&
nbsp; Chewing on his cheek, Wyeth checked his watch and heaved a great sigh. When the sigh ran out of air like a leaky tire finally gone unquestionably flat, he looked at Deeze, pushed his glasses up his nose in a resigned manner, and said, “Best get started then, I guess.”
Deeze chucked him on the arm. “Good man.”
Pausing long enough to share a kiss, they headed off at a robust clip in separate directions.
Things to do. People to see.
WYETH STORMED through the front doors of the San Diego Public Library like he owned the place. Thank God it was a work day, and while Wyeth had taken the day off to attend poor Agnes’s funeral, none of his homeless friends had.
He stopped by his locker in the employees’ lounge to fill his pockets from the three boxes of energy bars he kept stored there for his lunchtime snacks. Thusly armed and loaded for bear, he set off in search of the library’s merry band of homeless, aromatic readers. Luckily it was starting to look like rain outside, so they were scattered all over the library in abundance, ensconced for the day, as it were, with a good book, a nice cushy chair cradling their nasty, unwashed asses.
Wyeth found Crazy Bill first. He was sitting with an unlit half-smoked Pall Mall Light stuck over his right ear for safe storage while he scratched his armpit and skimmed through the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Apparently Crazy Bill was troubled by the viability of his portfolio. Not to mention fleas. Itty Bitty Bob sat at his side scanning the most recent copy of Highlights. It was the Halloween issue. He appeared to be testing himself by finding all the jack-o’-lanterns in a picture puzzle designed for six-year-olds. Bob was having trouble finding the last two “punkins.”
Bill listened to Wyeth explain the circumstances, all the while eyeing the energy bar Wy was using for bait. Any fool in the world could have seen the man might have been bought and sold for far less than an energy bar, but since an energy bar was what was being offered, an energy bar was what he took. The same could be said for Itty Bitty Bob. He liked energy bars too.
For a second energy bar, which for any homeless person in the world was the gastronomical equivalent of striking the mother lode, Bill and Bob were easily coerced into the role of recruiting surrogates, and set off on their own search for more homeless to entice. And entice them they did. Big Lola. Frankie the Fridge. Betty Boop. Eleanor Roosevelt (no relation to the original). Stanley G. Peckerhead. Cheesy Chuck. And a score of others.
Between Wyeth, Crazy Bill, and Itty Bitty Bob, they emptied the public library of derelicts in no time, filling the street front outside with a motley collection of humanity, male, female, some an odd mixture of both or neither, and each and every one of them nibbling an energy bar while they milled around fouling the air and awaiting further instructions.
With Crazy Bill at his side, Wyeth gazed upon this horde of down-on-their-luck miscreants and thought, Who says the work ethic is dead? Plucking the final energy bar from his suitcoat pocket, he tore the wrapper away and joined his friends in a midmorning snack. While he ate, he did a quick head count and came up with thirty-two souls. A decent enough turnout for anybody’s funeral.
Clapping his hands to get their attention, he stood on the street corner under a glowering sky that threatened rain at any second and explained the situation. He watched proudly as his audience began to get the picture, straightening the rags on their backs, trying to make themselves a little more presentable. An unfamiliar look of purpose lit the occasional tired, rheumy eye. A smile here and there displayed neglected teeth and offered a peek at an occasional wad of half-chewed Clif bar.
“Does everybody understand what we’re doing?” Wyeth finished up after rambling on for three minutes, trying to get his point across.
“We figured it out two and a half minutes ago,” Crazy Bill informed him, beginning to look bored. He was leaning with his arm atop Itty Bitty Bob’s head like Bob was a newel post, but Bob didn’t seem to mind.
Wyeth knew his limitations as far as public speaking went, so before he lost them completely, he raised his hand high like a trail boss preparing to move the herd. “Let’s do it then!” he bellowed in his most commanding voice, and together, the whole crowd headed off up the street in Wyeth’s wake, congenial, stinking to high heaven, chattering back and forth like magpies, and having the time of their lives.
What might be noted, although Wyeth didn’t realize it, is that each and every one of his homeless friends were aware of the lounge area in the back of Mitchell’s Mortuary where a generous spread of free cookies and an urn of hot coffee were offered up to visiting mourners. In fact, several of the homeless in Wyeth’s little parade visited the funeral home almost as often as they visited the library. There might not be much to read at Mitchell’s Mortuary but religious tracts and obituary print-outs, but the free cookies made up for it.
Crisply attired in his best black suit with his favorite power tie knotted neatly at his throat and his spit-shined Thom McAns glittering on his feet, Wyeth led this ragtag group of discarded humanity like a Pied Piper, clearing the city of unfortunates. To say that innocent pedestrians scattered when they saw them coming would be dabbling in reckless understatement. They positively flew.
WHILE WYETH emptied the library of the city’s homeless, Deeze had not been idle either. He rounded up Laurie at the Tan Banana along with three of her clientele—two as pale as fish bellies who hadn’t been spray painted yet, and one pudgy gentleman with an extremely small head who had been sprayed and who was now complaining that he’d turned out orange, which indeed he had. From the neck up he looked like a tangerine with ears.
Sending Laurie and her three customers on ahead, Deeze set off for the apartment building, where he started knocking on doors.
It was a workday after all, so it was amazing Deeze gathered together as many people as he did, or that he could find ones who could actually be made to feel guilty about not attending a lonely old woman’s funeral. It was especially surprising since most of those he coerced into going were happy as clams to learn Agnes was at long last dead and made few bones about letting Deeze know it. In fact, Deeze suspected that some of those he convinced to attend were simply going to make sure the woman was truly deceased and out of their hair forever.
When his rounds were complete and Deeze had knocked on every single door, he ended up with three Mexican maids, a pest control technician with a spray tank of bug killer on his back, a babysitter with a screaming two-year-old in her arms, a couple of old men who looked like they would be laid out at the funeral home soon enough themselves, and a young woman and a man who, by the shimmer of nervous sweat on the man’s brow and the hastily rearranged state of his attire, Deeze suspected wasn’t the good woman’s husband at all but had simply stopped by for a little hanky-panky while the real hubby was at the office. This impression was amplified when the woman actually forgot the man’s name during introductions. Why those two chose to follow Deeze to the funeral home was anybody’s guess. Maybe to assuage their own guilt. Or maybe after the illicit expenditure of body fluids, they were craving cookies too.
At any rate, by emptying the Tan Banana and the apartment building, and by grabbing at the last minute a couple of innocent bystanders off the street who didn’t look like they had anything better to do, Deeze ended up with a respectable following.
DEEZE’S MOB and Wyeth’s mob marched into the funeral home at precisely the same time, each group suspiciously eyeing the other. Wyeth half expected to see Agnes sit up in the casket and gawk when they entered. And while the mortician had probably seen it all in his many years of burying strangers, or thought he had, he most certainly had seen nothing like this. A couple of minutes later he was wandering up and down the aisle with a spray can of Glade, leaving a trail of evergreen-scented fog behind, trying to alleviate the reek of thirty-two homeless people and one dirty diaper, since the baby had taken the opportunity to fill the one he was wearing and the baby sitter had forgotten to bring an extra Pamper along for the ride.
The
undertaker also kept an extra wary eye on the guy with the tank of bug spray on his back, all the while wondering what the hell that was all about. The normal people in attendance, of which there were actually very few, fidgeted about the room trying to decide what stroke of madness had led them there to begin with, half of them choking on the Glade and the other half, women mostly, peeking into the casket to see what Agnes was wearing. The less than normal audience members headed straight to the lounge in the back to fill their pockets with cookies, their priorities unclouded.
A few minutes later, over the rustle of settling bodies and the surreptitious crunch of countless Oreos and ginger snaps, the organist, looking a little shell-shocked by the odd assortment of humanity present, struck the opening chords of “In the Garden” and the crowd began to quiet down. While everyone claimed a seat, the normal people squirmed as far away from the homeless folks as they could get, and even the bug man considered letting loose with a barrage of bug killer if any stinky people came too close. Eventually a grudging truce was ironed out and the service at last began.
Before the opening hymn ended, Wyeth glanced over and spotted Crazy Bill and Itty Bitty Bob sitting side by side in the second row. Each man had a cookie sticking out of his mouth. Hands free, the cookies gradually shortened as they were quietly and tidily sucked inside and gnawed to oblivion. Before he could stop himself, Wyeth was trembling with mirth. When Wyeth indicated to Deeze what he was so amused about, Deeze started giggling and couldn’t stop either. Before long they were both gasping and snorfling and trying not to pee their pants. When the pale mortician cast them an admonishing glare, they laughed all the harder.
“If Agnes was alive she’d kill us,” Deeze sputtered under his breath.
