The Dearly Departed Dating Service

by Rae Renzi

  For males, (1) the body (excluding brain) responds physiologically, which (2) sets off an adrenaline rush, on which (3) emotion (sometimes) catches a ride.

  In other words, the physical drives the emotional. For females, it’s the reverse: emotion > chemistry > physiology.

  Since Luke currently had no physiology to speak of, he was either responding out of habit or trying to understand where she fit into the picture. The former was best to ignore—it would fix itself eventually. As for the latter…

  I said to Luke, “Oh, don’t mind her. She’s new to this whole thing. Now, the bloodshot eyes… that won’t be a problem, because your eyes will be closed. Your family will want to see you as sleeping, peaceful. Easier on them. Plus, it’s kind of disturbing to look in someone’s eyes and see no one home, you know?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. My parents and my brother… they’re taking it hard. That would probably send them around the bend.” He picked up his arm by the wrist and dropped it. “Bodies. So clunky.”

  Marybob’s eyes almost jumped out of her head when, from her perspective, Luke’s arm rose and fell by itself. She stood abruptly, but to her credit, she didn’t squeak.

  He tossed an impish smile at Marybob and levitated to roost on the edge of the prep table, mischief evolving on his perfect face.

  It had been one of the (many) surprises for me as I got used to my ability to see the dead: after leaving their bodies, the Departed seem to revert to an ideal form of their physical selves. The new form isn’t always consistent with perfect beauty (logical, since the notion of perfect beauty fluctuates wildly, if fashion magazines are a clue), but it seems to be the ideal for that particular body. I have a theory that this disembodied perfection is the origin of the concept of angels. We make the inference—erroneous, obviously—that if a spirit’s appearance is perfect, so is its behavior. A faulty assumption that’s not restricted to the spiritual realms.

  “Parents usually have a hard time,” I said, trying to ignore Marybob’s darting eyes as I first dusted Luke’s face—or, rather, his corpse’s face—with tinted powder—er, earth minerals—then scrutinized my handiwork. He looked young and sweet. His family would like that. “They probably feel like they should have protected you.”

  “Yeah, the guilt’s gonna tear them up,” Marybob said to the empty space at the head of the table. “But look on the bright side. They’re old. They’ll probably die soon.”

  “Marybob…” I started and then stopped. Sensitivity wasn’t her strong point. She crept forward silently—no mean accomplishment on four-inch heels—toward the body’s head and proceeded to grope the empty space near it. Luke was no longer there. He’d walked around to the other side, smirking at Marybob, playing his own little version of blindman’s bluff.

  “She can’t see me,” he observed. “Or hear me. Not like you.”

  “True, but she believes you’re there. Most people don’t. Or won’t.”

  “Why can you?” He waved extravagantly at Marybob. Oddly, she turned and stared directly at him, a puzzled expression on her face.

  “I don’t have any idea. It just happened… one day.”

  “My girlfriend—she’s pretty messed up over this whole thing, too.”

  “Well, she’ll miss you. You know how it is.”

  Actually, I wasn’t sure he’d given much thought to how it was. The Departed could be awfully cheerful and surprisingly dense about some things. They forget that not everyone is thrilled with their untimely demise. Not a single one of them I’d met resented dying. Not one.

  Of course I understood why. How many of our insecurities, fears, pains, and limits were because of our physical bodies? Getting rid of all that dead weight, so to speak, had to be a relief, even a pleasure.

  But there are pleasures in physical life as well. Pleasures like romantic walks on moonlit nights, the delight in sharing a glass of fine wine, the heady scent of roses, the warmth of another’s body pulsing against one’s own…

  Well. I wiped my brow with the back of my hand. It was suddenly a little warm.

  “Joy, do you think you could, like, tell her I said everything’s good? I mean, this”—Luke waved his arms to indicate his new state—”is awesome. Maybe if she knew?”

  “Luke, honey, first of all, it’s not all about how you’re doing. She misses you. She’s probably kind of wrapped up in her own pain. Second, if I casually mention to her that you’re fine, that you actually like being dead—”

  “—she’d commit suicide.” Marybob wrapped her hands around her throat and stuck out her tongue.

  “—she’d think I was crazy,” I said, flashing Marybob a quelling look. “Sometimes I think I’m crazy. She’ll get over it sooner or later.”

  “When?”

  I sighed. Drat. It was beginning to look like Luke would hang around until he was sure his girlfriend was over the worst of the grief. He wouldn’t be the first. Or the second. Or even the third. It was getting kind of crowded around the mortuary, in fact.

  “When she finds someone else to love,” I told him.

  “Helloooo. Did you hear what you just said?” Marybob asked.

  “I know. The not-yet-Departed are beginning to—”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Marybob said. “I meant—”

  An obnoxious buzzing sound cut Marybob off mid-sentence. The intercom.

  I ignored it.

  Luke leaned over his body to study his face. “Not too bad. Considering.”

  “It—er, you did come out okay, didn’t you? There’s that one little problem with the missing ear, but you have to look close to notice.”

  He gazed at himself. “Kinda strange to see me lying there like a giant doll. There’s this totally weird disconnect between my mind and the rest of me now. Like”—he glanced sideways at Marybob—”you know.”

  I knew.

  Luke sauntered over to where Marybob sat on the stool and waved a hand in her face. She scooted back on the stool and swiveled to the right.

  That was strange. I knew she couldn’t see him…

  Luke reached over and poked a finger at her arm. It went through her but not without resistance.

  Marybob slapped at Luke’s finger and, incidentally, her arm. “Joy, you got mosquitoes in here. Need to get some bug spray.”

  Luke grinned and poked Marybob’s other arm.

  “Damn!” She slapped at it and jumped off the stool. “Hate those buggers.”

  The intercom buzzed again, this time with urgent little splutters.

  “Hang on a minute, Luke,” I said.

  Marybob snorted. “Like he’s got somewhere to go.”

  I hushed her and punched the button on the intercom. “Yes, Mr. Botts?”

  “Joy! How are things? I have an update on our marketing plan, so when you finish there, zip by my office and I’ll fill you in. It’s terrific! Forward-thinking. You’ll love it!” The derelict intercom added a raspberry to the end of each sentence.

  “Sure thing. I’ll be fifteen more minutes.”

  “Great! Terrific! See you then!”

  I took my finger off the button and turned back to the Lukes. The one was still flitting about, teasing Marybob. The other was, naturally, just lying there.

  “Are we done here, Luke?”

  Non-corporeal Luke sauntered over. “Think so. I look good, if, you know, kinda buttoned down. The parents will like it. It’s how they always wanted me to be.”

  “But not what you want to be.”

  He shrugged.

  I hesitated only a second before reaching over and scrambling his hair a little—artfully, of course.

  He grinned. “Dude.”

  I grinned back at him. “Okey-dokey, then. Thanks for stopping by—made it a lot easier.” I walked him to the door and opened it. This was more a hint than a necessity, since he no longer actually had to use doors, though he might not have figured that out yet. One had to learn how to be dead as well as alive.

  “Where are you goi
ng?” Marybob asked, following my gaze, her aim off a little to the left. “Uh, Luke?”

  “I want to check on my girlfriend. You know, see if I can do anything to help her.”

  My heart twisted. “You can’t help her. But she’ll get there.” I spoke gently but without much conviction.

  “Gotta try.” Luke shrugged and walked out.

  “He’s worried about his mother? Or girlfriend?” Marybob asked, trying to fill in what was for her a one-sided conversation.

  “Girlfriend.” I stared after him and bit my lip.

  This aspect of my work was hard. I wanted badly to help the left-behind flesh-and-blood Bereaved recovered from their grief. But they either didn’t believe me or thought I was crazy. It was frustrating, both because of the poor pitiful Bereaved and because of the ever-increasing number of Departed underfoot.

  Luckily, they don’t all hang around. In fact, most of the Departed don’t hang around for long—they have better things to do. The ones who fail to move on seem to be tied here by love. Not, as you might think, by the number of people who love and grieve for them, but rather by the strength of their ties to the ones they have chosen to love.

  “Which means Luke will probably be here for a while. Like the rest of the Departed with Bereaved Others,” I added.

  “Yeah, I can think of one that’s been here a spell, for sure.” Marybob laced her words with meaning. “Hey, I’ve got an idea—let’s go out tonight. You know, have some fun with live people?”

  I ignored her and focused on the relevant. “I wish I could help Luke’s girlfriend.”

  “Like get her to fall in love with someone else?”

  “Hmmmm.” A tiny bud of an idea began to unfurl in my mind. “Exactly. It’s the only way to get over losing someone.”

  “So, why don’t you, then?” Marybob leaned against the wall, arms folded.

  “Why don’t I what? Get her to fall in love?”

  Marybob threw her hands up. “No, nitwit, why don’t you fall in love—or at least date, or even put yourself in the same room with a living, breathing man?”

  “Don’t be silly, Marybob. You know I have a boyfriend.” I turned back to the table and started buttoning up ex-Luke’s shirt. “Craig is perfect.”

  Marybob lifted her eyebrows. “Craig is dead.”

  Chapter 3

  Marybob’s words sent a smidge of anxiety jittering under my skin. “So?” I grabbed Luke’s neatly folded silk tie off the workbench.

  “So… sex. How’s that working for you?”

  I hesitated as I tied a Windsor knot in Luke’s tie. This was the tricky part. “Sex isn’t everything.” I flipped the long end of the tie around. “Let’s see… this goes around here… then up, and over, and down the rabbit hole.” I flapped the brightly colored tie toward her face.

  The sartorial distraction didn’t work. Marybob had a mental mindset like a mosquito—she wouldn’t give up until she drew blood.

  Marybob rolled her eyes. “Joy, sex is nothing when your boyfriend’s dead. Nada. Zip. Except for some extremely perverse—”

  “How is this?” I asked her loudly as I cinched up the tie. But something she had said earlier caught in my mind. The part about getting someone to fall in love…

  I was still mulling over certain parts of my conversation with Marybob a few minutes later as I sat across from the well-padded person of Fredrick Botts, Funeral Director, and smoothed the cute little ruffles on my skirt. I was half in love with the way they swished around when I walked and had had to restrain myself from twirling down the hall. Walking into Mr. Botts’s office fixed that.

  The office was calculated to suggest the hub of a thriving business concern. A mahogany desk with matching side chairs sat in the middle of the room, lending the air of an English gentlemen’s club. Heavy burgundy drapes hung at the windows, and an abundance of polished brass accents filled shelves and corners. It didn’t seem to bother him that the “thriving” part of the equation had yet to extend beyond his office, which kind of defeated the purpose, but that was absolutely consistent with his brand of myopia.

  Mr. Botts had bought the bankrupt Tranquility Park Funeral Home a few months ago and had wasted no time in applying his recently acquired marketing expertise (in fashion merchandising, it turns out) to turning the business around. Or attempting to.

  His progress was slowed by notable gaps in his training. For example, he appeared blissfully unaware that not all market niches yielded to the same strategies. Case in point: having mastered the knowledge of fashion marketing, he seemed determined to use it. I hadn’t yet convinced him that treating caskets as fashion accessories might not be a viable marketing approach.

  I tried to pay attention to Mr. Botts, I really did. But away from the sanctuary of my workroom, my own problems came careening back. I kept my eyes pinned on him, but my mind keened at me, “Twenty THOUSAND dollars… TWENTY thousand dollars.”

  My attention veered back to his glowing face, but nothing there compelled it to stay.

  The primary purpose of these sales meetings, I’d eventually discovered, was to allow Mr. Botts to converse with himself. To my recurring regret, a mirror didn’t seem to do the trick for him, although a large, ornately framed one hung on the wall near his desk. Apparently his ability to apply reason—using the term loosely—depended on speaking aloud in debate-team mode to a live (and captive) audience.

  He had perfected voice projection. Modulation needed a little work.

  For the past few minutes, he had been holding forth about branding and market shares and, alarmingly, given the nature of our business, creating demand. The latter jolted my mind out of its rut and sent it on a mental odyssey involving organized crime, turf wars, and a quick mental review of techniques for concealing bullet holes in various parts of the anatomy.

  Mr. Botts waved his arms enthusiastically, and an overpowering smell of musk and sandalwood wafted my way, yanking my thoughts around once again. Should I diplomatically suggest that his robust cologne conflicted with the delicate fragrance of the flowers in the chapel? Maybe not. Mr. Botts had a particularly impermeable demeanor, so my hints would be like mist on an armored car. I made a mental note to mention the problem to Marybob, who had an approach more equal to the task.

  I was just wondering if I should bring up the subject of a raise in pay when a maniacal edge to his voice snagged my derelict attention.

  “… will be the Next Big Thing,” he said with convincing energy as he smoothed his tie into place. “It’s just a matter of marketing.”

  I scrambled to search through the echoes in my head. Nada. Obviously, I had missed something. “The Next Big Thing? You mean like Bitcoins?” I struggled valiantly to see the connection between the Next Big Thing and funerals.

  He squinched up his face. “Mmmm, maaaaaybe,” he said, with the roller-coaster intonation he used to signify his version of deep thought. “I was actually talking about the Haute Couture Funeral Service Line, complete with designer casket. You know, your Dior, your Versace, your Dolce & Gabbana. Hey, do you think Jimmy Choo would do caskets?”

  “Shoes, caskets—they’re the same basic shape, but—” I examined him closely, wondering if he’d suddenly and inexplicably developed a sense of humor.

  “Good. Good. I’ll get right on it. I like the Bitcoin angle, too. Definitely. The high-tech approach. Cutting-edge. Hmm…”

  No. No sense of humor. “But—”

  “Wait. Wait!”

  I sank back into the chair.

  “Picture it!” He moved his hand in a smooth arc in front of his face as if conjuring a scene. He jumped up from his desk, miming his words: “You walk up on the anniversary of your dearly beloved’s interment… and what do you want? You want music! So you wave your bitWallet in front of the headstone, and…” He frowned. “Can QR codes can be chiseled in stone?”

  “I’m not—”

  “… and, voila! Music rises from the ground beneath your feet as if sent from your beloved�
�� Tears gather in your eyes… Wait! I know! I know! Solar-powered mini-speakers!” He abruptly sat down again. His eyes teared up, and a dazed and happy smile blossomed on his face. “Oh my God! How beautiful is that? It’s wired! It’s green! It’s positively a knockout!”

  “Um…”

  He grabbed a pen and a piece of paper and began scribbling like mad. “Thank you, Joy. That is all,” he uttered in his business baritone without lifting his eyes from the page. “I’ll be in touch. Have… to get… this down.”

  I opened my mouth to reason with him but, noting his pose, closed it again. Reason had retired and passion was in charge. No point in wasting my breath.

  I stood to leave. With one hand on the doorknob, I remembered to mention Luke. “Oh, are you ready to check my work on the deceased Hillyer boy?”

  Scritch, scritch, scritch. He wrote with a fountain pen, probably a Mont Blanc. “Not necessary. I’m sure it’s fine. Just drop off the paperwork”—scritch, scritch—”when you get a chance.” He scribbled a few more words, then sat up and gazed at his work. “This will be tremendous. Just tremendous! A match made in heaven!”

  I started to remind him of the legalities of the situation—I wasn’t yet a licensed mortician, so he was obligated to supervise my work—and then it hit me: A match made in heaven… I caught my breath.

  “That’s it,” I whispered, one hand still on the doorknob. The tiny kernel Marybob had planted in my mind suddenly burst into bloom.

  “What’s that, Joy?” Mr. Botts absently patted his lacquered helmet of hair.

  “Nothing, nothing,” I clasped my hands together under my chin. Little bubbles of excitement started percolating in my head.

  I ran through my idea again…

  It was impeccable. I smiled.

  It was also the solution to at least one of my problems. Possibly two. I scooted out of the office and swung down the hall as I checked my intuition against logic and reason.

  One, the best way to survive losing someone is to fall in love. It’s a universal truth.

  Two, as everyone knows, tragedy and romance go hand-in-hand (need I even mention Romeo and Juliet? Tristan and Isolde?). The Bereaved were dripping in romantic potential, positively wallowing in it. They just didn’t know it.