Stranger

by Megan Hart

  “Sam I am.”

  When had his voice become so familiar? “I got your messages. All of them.”

  “Your secretary’s good.”

  “She’s my office manager,” I said. “And yes, she is.”

  “Uh-oh.” Sam made a shuffling noise. “It’s a good thing I’m wearing a sweater, cuz I think you’re cutting me cold, darlin’.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Shit,” Sam said. “Grace, don’t be mad at me.”

  “Why would I be mad at you?”

  “Shit fritters,” Sam swore. “When girls ask that question, what they really mean to say is,

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be mad at you?’”

  I refused to laugh with as much resolve as I’d made not to call him back, which is to say, not much. I did stifle it behind my hand, though. He must have heard me anyway.

  “You want to know why I didn’t call you for two weeks?”

  “I don’t, actually. I don’t care.”

  “Oh, Grace,” Sam said. “Don’t break my heart.”

  I thought of Jack’s face between my legs. I thought of coming from Jack’s tongue. I opened the album and touched a picture of Ben’s smile, and I thought of Peggy Johnson’s too-bright eyes and the slash of her wrong-shade lipstick.

  “What do you want, Sam?”

  A beat. “To talk to you.”

  A pause. “About what?”

  “Do I need a topic?”

  “Why didn’t you call me for two weeks?” I flipped the pages of my album through pictures of the past.

  “I had to go back home for a while. Settle some things.”

  I laughed, but it wasn’t a nice sound. “Oh? Where’s home?”

  “New York.”

  “They don’t have phones in New York?” I sighed. “Forget it, Sam. Just forget it, okay?

  This whole thing is just stupid.”

  “Grace,” Sam said. “How could you miss me if I didn’t go away?”

  I actually took the phone away from my ear and stared at it hard before putting it back to my ear. “You didn’t call me because you wanted me to miss you?”

  “Not a good idea?”

  “Not even close,” I told him. “Goodbye.”

  “Wait! Grace, don’t hang up. I’m sorry.”

  I closed my photo album on the face of someone I’d once loved. “Me, too, Sam.

  Goodbye.”

  I hung up, and he didn’t call back.

  “I didn’t think you’d call me again so soon.” Jack sprawled on the rumpled motel bed, taking up a lot of room and leaving very little for me.

  I didn’t mind. I curled on my side, my ass touching his thigh and one of his arms brushing the top of my head. If I wanted to roll over and face him, I could put my face directly against the dip of his waist. I didn’t move.

  “Grace?” His fingers toyed with my hair. “You awake?”

  “Yes.”

  I closed my eyes, thinking I should move but unwilling at the moment to get up. I could take a shower before I left, so I wouldn’t have to ride home smelling like sex. I sniffed the inside of my wrist, which smelled so much like Jack I didn’t want to wash it just yet, even though the real thing was still there with me.

  He rolled toward me and the bed dipped. Our bodies touched. We’d been sweating in the midsummer heat, but now I was glad the room’s air-conditioner didn’t do more than blow out intermittent puffs of stale, lukewarm air. I liked the way our skin stuck together when he pressed himself against my rear. I felt the tug of his fingers in my hair.

  “What are you thinking?”

  This question seemed so unlike anything a dude would ever ask that I actually turned halfway to look at him. “Why do you think I’m thinking anything?”

  He smiled and shifted our bodies so we aligned more comfortably. “You’re just quiet, that’s all. And usually you’re up and out of here. I figured…Hell, I don’t know. I thought I’d ask, that’s all.”

  His sweetness touched me. “I don’t have to be up and out of here unless I get a call. Or our time’s up.”

  “Our time’s not up. Not unless you want it to be.”

  I didn’t. Not yet. I blamed inertia, but that wasn’t quite it. It was nice, lying here with Jack after a session of really rousing sex. It was nice having him twist my hair into small dreadlocks and feel him against my body.

  “Do you like this?” I asked. Too late, I realized I hadn’t meant to ask it quite that way.

  “Your work, I mean.”

  “I like this.” Jack shifted again and we adjusted ourselves into a companionable tangle of limbs.

  “How’d you get started?” I pushed up on one elbow to look at his face.

  He laughed. “Some guy offered me two hundred bucks to sleep with his girlfriend and him.”

  “Both?”

  He laughed again, stretching a little. I admired his body without pretending I didn’t, and traced the lines of his tattoos with my fingertip while he answered.

  “Us both with her. Not me and him.”

  “He just asked you, out of the blue?”

  Jack grinned. “Yep.”

  “Hmm. How did you know he wasn’t some sort of freaky serial killer or something?”

  Jack laughed and shrugged. “I didn’t. And he wasn’t. It was all good. Two hundred bucks to fuck his old lady, who was a smoking-hot piece of ass, by the way. I figured I could do that again. Asked around. Got hooked up with the agency and here I am.”

  “Here you are.” I slid a hand down his thigh to squeeze the muscles of his calf.

  His hand came around to grab my butt and squeeze. “Here we are.”

  I let my hand drift up and down his leg. “I should go.”

  Jack rolled us both quickly, surprising me. He pushed my hands above my head, pinning my wrists. “Not yet.”

  His cock pressed the inside of my thigh. “Again?”

  He nodded and dipped his head to mouth my throat. “Again.”

  He was very, very good. I was more than happy to let him kiss my neck and breasts, and to run his tongue in tickling traces over my belly and hip. We didn’t even need a game to play.

  “Jackhammer,” I murmured, eyes closed, as he ran his hands down my body. “You fuck like a jackhammer.”

  “You like it that way,” he said in a low voice against my thigh. His breath, hot, gusted over my skin. “Sometimes.”

  I had paid him to know how I liked it, but for a moment, having him be so certain opened my eyes wide. Jack didn’t seem to notice. He moved between my legs to nuzzle and lick. I thought for a moment I was going to freeze, that my mind would override my body and keep me from the pleasure I knew very well Jack could provide.

  Deep breath. Don’t think about it. Don’t…

  “Holy hell,” I whispered. “Where did you learn to do that?”

  “Practice,” Jack murmured against me, and I imagined I felt the curve of his smile. “Lots and lots of practice.”

  “Tell me about it,” I urged as he moved his hand to take the place of his mouth. “The women.”

  “What about them?” He slid a finger inside me, then another, while I arched.

  “Tell me how you fuck them.”

  “Every one is different,” Jack said. He touched my clitoris, rubbing, then left me for a moment to return with a condom. “The way they smell. Taste.”

  He ran a hand over my body. “Feel.”

  “Tell me how you feel.”

  He knelt between my open legs, his prick in his hand as he rolled a condom down over it.

  He put his hand on the bed next to my side and nudged my entrance with his cock. I held my breath, waiting for the moment he’d slide inside, but Jack took his time. I’d called him Jackhammer, but he was teasing me now.

  “I like to watch the way their skin changes color when they come.” He touched the heat on my chest and at the base of my throat before pushing forward, inside me. “I like the sounds you make, and the way your nails feel i
n my back when I’m fucking you hard. The way you like it.”

  He was not fucking me hard. He was doing it slow, each thrust in and out smooth and long. Thorough.

  “You make them all come,” I tried to say, though the words got garbled by a moan.

  “Yeah. I make them all come.” Jack bent to nibble at my shoulder and throat as he moved inside me. He slid a hand between us to give me the pressure I needed.

  “Like me…” I was tipping, fast, and my nails found his back.

  Jack hissed and thrust harder. I came, electric. He groaned against me and shivered. I relaxed my fingers and smoothed them over the small ridges I’d left in his skin.

  “Not like you,” Jack whispered into my ear, but I pretended not to hear.

  Chapter 10

  I’d meant what I told Peggy about her husband. Ron had been a very nice man. The sort who good-naturedly played chauffeur to a gaggle of teenage girls after school dances and never failed to attend every band and chorus concert in which his children performed. He’d always worn a red bow tie. It was what had been provided for us to lay him out in, along with a familiar dark blue suit.

  It’s hard for some to understand how I can work with the dead, particularly the bodies of those I knew. I think it’s because people are frightened of death and embarrassed to be so; or because it’s too easy to imagine how it would feel to be laid upon a table, naked, with the hands of strangers cleaning you. Nakedness embarrasses people. To be honest, I’m not the sort to parade around in the locker room of the gym, and exhibitionism leaves me cold—but after death, the body is exactly what Peggy Johnson had called it. A shell. An empty package. We’re born naked, and when we die we’re put into the ground or even cremated with our clothes on, but the modesty this provides has nothing to do with the feelings of the person who died. It’s entirely for those left behind.

  For me, preparing a body is a matter of respect and honoring that shell. Of cleaning it, embalming it if necessary, of applying cosmetics or restorative techniques to recreate as closely as possible the living face. I don’t see breasts or buttocks. I see a human being who can no longer do this for himself; it’s my job to do it.

  “Can you hand me that gauze?” I gestured to Jared, who was tossing a soiled sheet into the laundry.

  Because he’d been in hospice care, Ron Johnson had few tubes to remove, unlike if he’d been a hospital patient. Still, he’d had a permanent IV drip in one arm and that had to come out.

  Jared and I busied ourselves with our routine, moving in tandem to the sounds of Death Cab for Cutie coming from my iPod speakers.

  We worked mostly in silence, though occasionally Jared would break out singing along with the music. As much as he liked to tease me about my taste in bands, he knew the lyrics to most of the songs. I wasn’t much of a singer, though I’d hum once in a while. We both paused in our tasks when the simple acoustic guitar and vocals of a new track came on.

  “I Will Follow You Into the Dark.”

  “What do you think?” Jared asked as we slipped Ron Johnson’s arms into the sleeves of his suit coat. “Do you think there’s a tunnel of light?”

  He was referring to the song’s lyrics. “I don’t know.”

  I arranged the red bow tie while Jared brushed off the suit’s lapels. Ron Johnson was done, ready to be put into the simple cherry casket his wife had decided would best serve as his final resting place. We finished with him and transferred him to the gurney that we’d push into the chapel, where we’d place him in the casket.

  “You’ve never thought about it?” Jared got behind the gurney while I pushed open the swinging doors to the hall.

  “No. Not really.” We maneuvered the gurney with ease, and I was grateful for Jared’s strength. Illness had whittled away much of the belly Ron Johnson had sported, but he was still a large man.

  “Not ever?” Jared sounded astonished.

  I was a little more surprised he’d worked with me for so many months without ever asking me what I thought happened after death. “Not really, Jared.”

  The embalming room was in the basement and the chapel upstairs. Though I’d often vowed that the first set of renovations I’d make to the funeral home would be to add an elevator, I hadn’t yet managed it. That meant pushing the gurney up the ramp outside the building and onto the main floor. Several years ago my dad had enclosed it to protect it from the elements so we no longer had to struggle in ice or rain, but the effort required at pushing a corpse up or down it was still substantial. The white-painted walls bore the scuffs and scars of many bumps of the gurney, and the wooden floor was heavily scratched.

  In the chapel, we placed Mr. Johnson into the coffin. The final viewing was scheduled for a few hours from now. I carefully arranged his hands and made sure none of the makeup had smudged off. I turned to help take the gurney back, but found Jared staring at me.

  “What?”

  “I just can’t believe you don’t think about it.” Jared took the gurney so I didn’t have to, and I followed him back to the prep room so we could finish cleaning up.

  “What’s to think about?”

  When my dad had taken over the business, there had been far fewer regulations. Now we had to follow rules about bodily fluids and human waste or risk a visit from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. We were inspected and could be fined for not following them.

  Regulations were one of the few things Jared wasn’t skilled with.

  He helped me strip the gurney and toss the linens into the red-lined basket, filling it.

  “C’mon. You’re around death every day. You can’t tell me you don’t wonder what really happens. Bright light, Pearly Gates, burning flames of hell. You never think of anything like that?”

  “What do you think about it?” I challenged as I slipped on a pair of latex gloves that covered my wrists and pushed the full laundry cart toward the door leading out. “Do you believe in heaven and hell?”

  “I think so,” Jared said, following.

  “See? You don’t know, either!”

  “At least I think about it!”

  Together we wrestled the heavy cart into the laundry room. This part of the basement wasn’t finished beyond concrete walls and floor. Unshaded bulbs hung from bare rafters. It was clean of cobwebs, at least, but still the only “creepy” room in the house.

  “I don’t think we go anywhere after we die, okay? Is that what you want to hear? It’s not a popular opinion, Jared. Not in this business.”

  He helped me load the industrial-size washer with the dirty linens. “So you do think about it.”

  “I guess so.” I added the special powdered detergent required by law to clean bodily fluids, and turned the dials. The machine grunted. Jared and I both looked at it. “Did the washing machine just…talk?”

  Nothing else happened. I finished setting the cycle. We stared at it again.

  “How old is that thing, anyway?” Jared asked as we started out of the room.

  “It’s probably as old as I am.”

  From behind us, the machine grunted again, then began the normal, groaning churning it always did when it began to fill with water. Jared took the cart from me, though it was way lighter empty, and I held open the doors for him. From the hall came the faint sounds of the songs still playing in the prep room.

  “So…ancient?” Jared gave me a charming smile and I responded with a rude gesture.

  “Nice one. So ladylike.”

  I laughed. “That’s me. A real princess.”

  “Who’s going nowhere when she dies.” Jared shoved the laundry basket back into its place and helped me start spraying and wiping all the surfaces we’d used.

  “Why does this concern you so much?” I asked him.

  “I’m not concerned, really.” Jared shrugged. “I just think it’s interesting.”

  From the laundry room came an unmistakable growl. We both looked. I found it funny that Jared stepped behind me automatically. Since he was taller and
broader than I, I wasn’t sure what protection he hoped I’d offer.

  “What was that?” He had the voice of someone who asks hoping there’s a good answer.

  “I don’t know. Let’s go—”

  Another growl, followed by a roar and a crash. And then the sound of rushing water.

  We ran. Before we got even a few steps out of the prep room, the flood greeted us. Waves of dirty water flowed from under the laundry-room door. They didn’t appear to have any intention of stopping.

  Jared and I sloshed through it. The sound of growling got louder. By the time we got through the laundry-room doors, the water had risen to our ankles. Jared stopped just inside the door and snagged my arm to stop me, too.

  “Watch out!” He pointed to the ancient, straining washer, which was rocking on its base.

  I’d have laughed if I could, but nothing came out but a gasp. A moment later he’d proven me right not to laugh, because sparks started shooting out of the back of the washer along with the torrents of water pouring from the wildly flailing black rubber hose that had come disconnected.

  I didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that water plus electricity equals bad news, so, taking Jared’s arm, I turned and ran. Every step through shin-deep water left me cringing, expecting the snap, crackle and pop of electrocution. The fluorescent lights above us flickered and fizzled. If they went out entirely, we’d be up the creek without a paddle, as my dad was fond of saying.

  “Shit,” panted Jared as we slid in the wet and managed to fling open the doors to the ramp.

  “Wouldn’t the stairs be easier?”

  We both looked across to the stairs, three doors down the hallway. Then at the water, which didn’t, thank God, seem to be rising but still gurgled menacingly. And the flickering lights above. A scorched smell had begun wafting down the hall toward us.

  “Are you going to put your feet back in that water?” I asked.

  “Hell, no.”

  “Ramp it is, then.”

  Our wet shoes made the ramp slippery, and I thanked my dad’s foresight in laying down the rubberized tread he’d intended to help keep the gurneys from sliding. In moments we were upstairs and bursting through the door.