The Dearly Departed Dating Service

by Rae Renzi

  It would be a fine balance, I realized, to find someone who was in enough distress to want our help but far enough away from that first raw, jagged edge of grief to want to move forward. I was worried that it was too early for Clydes, but Ruby had insisted otherwise.

  Ruby frowned. “Well, yeah, but I think that’s just… you know, habit or something. Plus, he’s been in the hospital a while—that’s no barrel of laughs. He’s out now, and he’s ready. Trust me. He was ready before I died.”

  If that were true, then the combination of wanting-comfort and ready-to-move-on should be a perfect simmering pot for romance.

  Ruby supplied a list of possible candidates, women who were part of the motorcycle crowd that she thought might interest Clydes. I didn’t ask what “interest” meant in this case.

  I relayed this information to Marybob, who, of course, couldn’t hear Ruby.

  “Can he pay?” Abrupt, but it was a crucial question.

  “Ruby says yes. A bigger question—is he ready? What do you think, Luke?”

  Luke lounged along the top of my workbench, practicing moving combs and scissors. He’d been listening during the meeting but was uncharacteristically quiet. It worried me a little. He wasn’t as rambunctious as Ronnie, but he wasn’t the quiet type, either.

  He shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?” It wasn’t the enthusiastic endorsement I’d hoped for.

  Marybob frowned at the gleaming tools moving around on my bench. “Is that what Luke says? Maybe? Maybe what?”

  “Maybe he’s ready. Maybe he can pay,” Luke clarified. I parroted his words for Marybob’s benefit.

  “I guess that’ll do. And maybe I can be Madam Mystique?” Marybob suggested hopefully.

  Luke tossed a veiled look at Marybob. “Maybe not Madam Mystique.”

  “Maybe not,” I agreed.

  The next evening, a Sunday, we heard Clydes before we saw him—the deep-throated roar of his ride preceded him by at least a full city block. We were at Tranquility Park in the small but nicely appointed room reserved for discussing financial arrangements with the families. It was perfect for our purpose. Clydes, having recovered from his own injuries, was finally coming in to talk about funeral arrangements for Ruby with Mr. Botts, and we’d decided to approach him at the same time about the dating service. The trick was to accomplish this without Mr. Botts finding out.

  I sat in a wing-backed chair in front of the low coffee table, with the Dearly Departed Dating Book in my lap. Clydesdale’s page was already covered with his likes and dislikes, provided in detail by Ruby. I don’t know why, but it surprised me to see strawberry ice cream on the list. Of course, how he liked it might differ in a number of ways from how I liked it (in a bowl with a spoon). An interview with him would give me a chance to verify the accuracy of her information.

  Luke perched quietly on the side table, seemingly preoccupied. Marybob reclined on the sofa, exhausted from a torturous day in the beauty salon due to a run of menopausal women bent on recapturing their youth. The room was illuminated by a single mullioned window, which was framed by deep-green and ivory draperies that afforded a view of the circular drive.

  When a motorcycle pulled into the drive, Clydes astride it, Luke perked up a little.

  “You like motorcycles?” I asked him.

  “Never got into them. Parents would go ballistic, you know. But I always thought they were kind of cool. Totally wish I could have ridden one.”

  Which would have likely landed him in his present state earlier. I didn’t point this out, as it was a moot point, and, to be perfectly honest, I was almost able to understand the attraction. Clydes’s machine was a Harley-Davidson (naturally), black (naturally), and with a red rose (oddly) painted on the fat middle part of the vehicle, which I later learned was the gas tank. It had a kind of strange appeal—all those moving parts, all that chrome. The noise I could have done without. But its size and sound also commanded respect and a little fear, typical of any localized display of power.

  Clydes himself was… interesting. It was clear his name was not ironic. He bore more than a passing resemblance to his equine namesake—sturdy, muscular, enormous, but well proportioned and possessed of a kind of earthy dignity. He was dressed all in black and had a long, thick braid down his back. His features, strong like Ruby’s, could be called handsome, in a roughshod way. His eyebrows were heavy and seemed to be pulled downward by more than mere gravity. He wore his sadness like a heavy cloak.

  “Guess our mark’s—”

  “Client.”

  “—client’s here,” Marybob said. “I better scoot.”

  Clydes parked the bike and walked up to the door. The heavy chains hanging from different parts of his person swung in rhythm with his ponderous tread up the front steps. Although the black leather he wore was probably stiff with the cold, it couldn’t account for the rigidness in his bearing. The strength of his defense against grief made me wonder if Luke’s “maybe” was overstated.

  I met him at the door, introduced myself, and quietly ushered him into the room before I went to notify Mr. Botts our client was here. The room was a smaller, more intimate version of the viewing room, and similarly designed for the comfort of the Bereaved. The draperies muffled the sounds from outside, sending a powerful message of hush. On the gleaming, round mahogany table sat a carefully chosen array of flowers in a navy-blue porcelain vase—not too cheerful, not too gloomy—softly lit by a pair of glowing pillar candles resting on heavy brass stands. On the credenza along one wall, framed needlework of an inspirational poem sat by a mahogany box that discreetly offered tissues to our less composed clients.

  I showed Clydes to a chair and told him I’d be right back with the director. Then I left him with his grief.

  When I poked my head into Mr. Botts’s office, he was on the phone. I pointed in the direction of the room and mouthed the word, “Client.” He nodded and held up his hand, fingers splayed, and repeated the gesture. Ten minutes.

  I hesitated outside the room before rejoining Clydesdale. Was this a good time to approach him for the dating service? He might be in a more receptive mood now than after exposure to Mr. Botts.

  I glanced around the hallway, hoping to see a handy Departed for moral support—preferably Ruby or Craig or even Luke—but the Departed suddenly had become scarce.

  Marybob had stayed in the anteroom, out of Mr. Botts’s sight, but within reach if it appeared Clydes was ready to move on. The plan was that I’d make the initial approach, and if he were willing, Marybob would take him somewhere comfortable to get down to details and close the deal.

  As I stood in the hallway vacillating, she poked her head into the hallway and made little go on motions with her hands.

  Well, I thought, what was the worst that could happen?

  He could say he wasn’t ready.

  Like Kenneth, he could insist that he didn’t need help in the social arena.

  On the other hand, he could say yes. What did I have to lose?

  I crossed my fingers and walked in. Clydes looked up when I entered, a mulish look on his face. Naturally, I assumed he was resistant to the cost of the funeral arrangements. Who wouldn’t be?

  “Clydes, the director will be here in just a few moments. So, in the meanwhile, I’d like to talk to you about the next stage of your life.” I sat in the chair next to him.

  He glowered at me but didn’t reject the idea, so I pushed it to the next level.

  “It’s important that you have someone to comfort you, to ease the way through those difficult moments.” I was pretty proud of this lead-in—not too flowery but a straight line to our goal.

  Clydes’s glower took on a slightly confused look. “What’re you sayin’? I have the guys.”

  He also had Ruby, leaning on the table beside him, but of course he didn’t know that. She looked a little concerned.

  I shifted forward in my chair, moving a little closer, creating that sense of intimacy. “Yes, and I’m very gla
d you have your friends. Friends are important. But the kind of comfort I’m thinking about…” Oh, drat, this was harder than I’d thought.

  He blinked rapidly and his meaty hands gripped his knees.

  Ruby raised her eyebrows at me. “You don’t want to be stalling out now, I’m thinking. Keep talkin’.”

  I cleared my throat and plunged forward. “The kind of comfort I’m thinking about requires a woman’s touch, a willing companion in your time of need.” I whipped out the Dearly Departed Dating Service card, and, in my best Marybob imitation, offered it to him. “We can help you with that.”

  There! I had done it. I had made my first pitch for the dating service.

  However, in my relief at getting the words out, I failed to notice that my pitch, however well delivered, was not so well received.

  Ruby muttered, “Shitfire!” and stood abruptly, which snapped my focus to Clydes.

  His face had turned red, and as if shadowing Ruby’s movements, he lurched to his feet.

  I had two thoughts before the lights went out. One, clueless—all of them. Two, why is he reaching for the flowers?

  Chapter 18

  The flashing lights made my head hurt. Hurt more. Coupled with jounces and jolts that felt like a speed-bump race, it was an unpleasant couple of minutes. Or it might have been longer, I wasn’t sure. I had been blessedly unaware of most of it.

  Apparently my list of the worst possible outcomes of my meeting with Clydes had been incomplete. Still, I don’t think I can be faulted for overlooking the possibility that someone—me, to be exact—might end up being rushed to the hospital in the back of a hearse.

  “We’ll attract more attention in the hearse!” Mr. Botts asserted, slightly hysterically, as we slid up to the hospital emergency dock.

  It certainly did that. However, he had not considered the confusion it would cause when, instead of picking up a dead body, he attempted to deliver a live one.

  Mr. Botts leapt out of the hearse to intercept an orderly sent to redirect us to the morgue. Marybob, either wisely or as a matter of style, chose to exit in a more leisurely manner. I couldn’t see much from my vantage point in the back of the hearse, but I heard Mr. Botts’s voice step up from baritone-business to soprano-frantic in a few loud exchanges.

  “You have a live person in there?” someone finally roared. A moment later, the rear doors of the hearse were flung open, and an orderly yanked out the gurney. He did a quick look-over of me right there on the ambulance dock. I’m afraid the blood-soaked towel on my head made something of an impression on Mr. Botts, who took one look at me and fell over like a chain-sawed tree.

  The reaction of the healthcare professionals, however, was terrific. These people are not distracted by incidentals (such as Mr. Botts lying prone on the ground). After a quick glance in Mr. Botts’s direction, the orderly carefully unwrapped my toweled head to examine the injury.

  “It’s nothing,” I explained with a flap of my hand. “It only bled a lot because it’s a head wound. My friends overreacted.”

  “Lose consciousness?”

  “Not for any—”

  “Oh, hell, yes,” Marybob said. “Went out like a light. Eyes rolled right up in her head, and conk! She was done. Out for a full five minutes.” She recounted the incident with a little too much relish. I tried to discreetly shush her, but she ignored me.

  “Cause of injury?” The orderly pulled out a penlight and shone it in first one eye then the other.

  “Case of unresolved grief, I’d say. She got in the way of a flying flower vase.”

  The orderly’s face was carefully neutral. “Flower vase. Then I take it the injury is not the result of a car wreck or a fall?”

  “No. Nothing serious. It’s really nothing, only a little head cut,” I said.

  “Not saying it’s serious, ma’am, but”—he looked down at the bloody pile of towels—“neither would I say it was nothing. Minimum, stitches. Head injury with loss of consciousness? CT scan required. You’ll be here a while, so you might as well settle in.”

  He handed me off to a nurse and, with a snort of derision, turned to my swooning boss. I sagged into a wheelchair and was escorted into the building to a row of curtained treatment cubicles with Marybob trailing along behind me, sightseeing, as it were.

  “Busy place,” Marybob observed as the nurse marshaled me toward a bed. “Could use a little music to cheer things up.” A bustle started behind us, and we were snowplowed aside by three medics pushing a gurney bearing an unconscious man—not Mr. Botts—through swinging doors into the surgical suite. Marybob stared after them. “Kind of exciting, though.”

  I didn’t answer. I was too tied up in a complicated mix of feelings: familiarity and thwarted purpose, followed closely by a kind of retrograde fear and anger. And loss. Too much loss.

  For over two years I had managed to avoid anything resembling a hospital, but here I was again. I watched silently as busy nurses, residents, and med students raced around the room, dashing in and out of the patient cubicles, scribbling on charts, calling out to one another in professionally calm voices. The faint perfume of isopropyl alcohol pervaded the area, bringing with it a touch of excitement left over from my med-school days. I could almost feel the stethoscope hanging around my neck, the clipboard in my hand. The urge to get up and help the staff with their huge burden of care was almost as strong as the urge to make a break for the door. What on earth had possessed me to let Marybob and Mr. Botts—mostly Mr. Botts—bully me into coming here? Oh, right. I hadn’t had a say—I’d been unconscious.

  “How long will I be here?” I asked the nurse.

  “That’s for the doctor to decide,” she primly replied. “He’ll be with you in a moment.” The nurse gave me some papers to fill out and took my vitals. I almost asked her exactly what “a moment” meant, but I knew perfectly well it meant “when nothing more urgent is going on.” With a last inspection of my head, she marched out, twitching the curtain closed.

  “Marybob, you don’t need to stay. Depending on the doctor, it could be hours.” But not if I could help it. Without Marybob’s too-noticeable self calling attention to me, I could probably slink out.

  She cast me a dismissive look. “Nice try. They wouldn’t let you out of here, anyway. Any minute she’ll come back and take your clothes and make you put on one of those dish-towel gown things that show your butt just to make sure you don’t escape.” She scooted over on the rolling stool she’d appropriated and yanked back the curtain so she could watch the comings and goings of emergencies big and small. “Besides, view’s not too bad. Not bad at all, in fact.” She straightened her back and wiggled on the stool.

  I followed my friend’s gaze to a small cluster of people at the nurses’ station. It wasn’t my nurse who excited Marybob’s attention, I suspected, but the two males, both apparently doctors, both wearing blue scrubs. Their backs were to us, but even so, I had to agree: the view was definitely pleasant.

  I don’t know what it is about scrubs. I’m sure they weren’t actually designed to show off the male physical form to best advantage, but a happier accident of fashion didn’t exist. Unimpeded by a collar, a jumble of loose brown curls framed the head of the slimmer man, and the plain blue cotton fabric of his top hung nicely on his wide shoulders. An air of eagerness around him suggested youth and relative inexperience. The same wide neckline and yoked back lent his partner—or, more likely, mentor, based their relative postures—an air of vulnerability, in spite of his more impressive musculature—possibly because his hair was shorter, but unkempt, with little feathery brown tendrils curling on the back of his head and onto his neck. The shirt sleeves of the scrubs were cut just short enough to reveal the swelling of biceps on both men and somehow draw attention to the long, firm muscles of their forearms. The drawstring pants fit each of them snugly, giving the thinner one the appearance of angular elegance and the other man a suggestion of brute strength. One could almost see the muscles tighten in their thighs as
they unconsciously shifted their weight while reviewing charts.

  Marybob sighed. “You left this for a morgue?”

  “Mortuary,” I corrected automatically. “And, for your information, people are even more gorgeous in their Departed form.”

  “Yeah, so you’ve said. But you can’t feel the Departed.”

  A snippet of longing snaked through me. I pushed it away. “It wouldn’t be a good idea for you to feel them, either,” I said, nodding toward the doctors.

  “No, but it’s the possibility that makes it yummy. Like looking at an ice cream cone. With sprinkles.”

  I didn’t have a response to that.

  My nurse waited patiently beside the two men, a clipboard in her hand. When the short-haired doctor turned his head to the nurse, she leaned toward him—a little closer than was professional, in my opinion—and held out the clipboard with a hint of coquettishness. He glanced at it, said a few words, and had started to hand it back when something on it apparently caught his eye. His whole body tensed and his focus tightened, as did his grip on the clipboard. He said something short to the nurse. She turned and nodded in my direction.

  When he turned around to face me, suddenly, in this too-familiar setting, it all came back to me with sickening force: the beeping monitors, the smell of hot iron, the deep, drowning red of Craig’s blood. And the surgeon who had banished me from my boyfriend’s side in his greatest moment of need. A black fog settled over me, blocking out everything except my hateful memories of the man. I despised him.

  But a pinpoint of reason pricked at my conscience. Why should I hate him? He had been rude to me when he bumped my car, but that could hardly account for the roiling in my gut. I squeezed my eyes shut and forced my clenched jaw to release. Reason. I needed reason.

  When I opened my eyes, the surgeon was still staring at me. The surgeon who had, I forced myself to admit, been absolutely dedicated—however misguided—in his effort to save Craig’s life. He hadn’t known Craig was my boyfriend. Of course, if he’d known that, he would have had even more reason to banish me.