by Todd Harra
“That bad?”
“I might as well pitch a tent here in the office.”
“Poor you.”
“Poor me. I can’t even find the time to go do a little speed dating, much less finish a stupid clock.”
“Speed dating.” She snorted. “Is that what you call it these days?”
“Oh, shut up.”
She ignored me as she usually did. I think Dani thought I was too dramatic.
“If you’re so stressed then why don’t you take a long weekend this upcoming weekend and use my place in the Keys?”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
Dani had a beautiful condo in Lower Matecumbe Key that we used to go to all the time before she had kids. I loved going to her place. It was great for doing nothing and relaxing on the beach, or if you wanted to do something, Key West was just an hour and a half drive down the coastal highway.
“Yeah, sure,” Dani said. “Take it. Enjoy yourself. I’ll drop the key off at your office tomorrow on my way to the gym.”
“Oh my God, Dani, you’re a life saver!”
“I wouldn’t go that far, but thanks, Toph. One condition though—” she trailed off.
“What would that be, my dear?” I asked coyly. I knew what was coming.
“No strange women in my bed.”
“Why Dani, I would never—”
She cut me off. “Save it, lover boy. Gotta run. I’ll drop the key tomorrow.”
We hung up.
I had met Danielle Brown, or Dani, as her friends call her, about twelve years earlier when I first got into the mortuary business. She worked for the Omega Counseling Center. I was looking for a place to refer clients of mine. We met and became friends.
Dani left Omega to open her own clinic, The Hope Clinic, that specializes in drug and alcohol recovery counseling, something closer to her heart than what she had been doing as a general family counselor at Omega.
Dani found her life’s calling after her own bout with alcoholism in her late teens. Her mother and father had both been alcoholics. Her mother died in a drunk driving accident when Dani was ten years old, and her father died of liver cirrhosis about three years ago—I buried him. Now fifteen years sober, Dani is a big advocate for local chapters of AA and MADD programs. Though Dani specializes in addiction counseling, she still takes my referrals as a favor to me; I don’t trust my clients with anyone else.
I was embalming a body the morning after our conversation when Dani dropped the keys off with the receptionist, so I didn’t get a chance to talk to her. I couldn’t wait to get down to Lower Matecumbe and enjoy some quality time on the beach sipping a Rum Runner and listening to Ziggy Marley. So excited that I wasn’t even bothered when I was awoken at some god-awful time the following morning to make a removal.
I hired a trade embalmer to cover for me, gave explicit instructions to my apprentice, told my receptionist to hold all my calls, and headed for the Keys. It’s about a six-hour drive from my mortuary to Lower Matecumbe. I put the top down on my car and made it to Key Largo in a little less than five hours. Since I knew Dani’s house would be bone-dry, I stopped at a liquor store for some supplies and then drove another hour down Route 1, where I made a stop in Islamorada for a couple bags of ice. From Islamorada, Dani’s condo is just a couple of miles. I parked my Mustang in the palm-shaded lot and left my small gym bag in the car in favor of unloading the essentials.
I threw open all the windows and immediately set to work pouring Bacardi and Malibu rum over ice in the blender, adding cranberry, orange, and pineapple juice, and topping my creation off with a splash of Bacardi 151 rum. In minutes, I was sitting in a chair on the beach enjoying my Rum Runner and watching the sunset. Honestly, watching the sun go down over the gently lapping waves in the Keys is one of the most beautiful things in the world. All the stress of the past year melted away.
I was about halfway through my cocktail when I felt my phone vibrate. I cursed and decided not to answer it, but checked the caller I.D. It was Dani.
Probably just checking to make sure I arrived all right, I thought. I decided to answer it.
It wasn’t Dani. It was Leo, her husband.
“Topher,” he said. His voice sounded strange. Strained. “You need to come back.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
There was a long pause and then he said, “Dani was involved in a drunk driving accident this evening. She’s dead.”
My head swam. “But how—”
“She was on her way home from my mother’s. She had just dropped the kids off for the weekend—” He gulped. “The driver of the other car hit a guardrail on the freeway and swerved into her. His blood alcohol level was 0.28; he’s fine. But Dani—” There was a pause. I thought I had lost the connection. “They said it was instantaneous…” Leo trailed off.
I sat stunned for a moment. I mumbled something into the phone. I heard a garbled, “Thanks,” and the line went dead.
With a heavy heart, I retraced my steps north to give Dani the last gift I had to give in our friendship.
The world is filled with injustice, but Dani seemed to have been dealt an especially cruel fate after all she had worked for and achieved. Her death was a bitter pill to swallow. I still kick myself that I didn’t come out to say hello to Dani that day she dropped the keys off. I guess what I’m trying to say is: always make your peace with your friends and family because you never know when the last time will be.
CHAPTER 49
Windsor or Prince Albert?
Contributed by a club cricket player
When I was a boy I had to get dressed up for everything. Today, everyone is casual. I see kids in church on Sunday wearing jeans, people in fine dining establishments wearing shorts, and of course, people coming to services at my funeral home in any number of… costumes. I see tee shirts, ripped jeans, sneakers, tawdry mini-skirts, and the like. Gone are the days of dark suited men and elegantly dressed women wearing big hats clustered in the funeral parlor under clouds of blue cigarette smoke, whispering in hushed tones. Casual is in, even at a funeral.
Things sure have changed. For the better, I can’t say, but I know when I was a boy my mother insisted I wear a suit for just about every occasion. I can remember wearing a suit on the boardwalk at the shore during family vacations. Can you imagine putting on a suit to go get ice cream? But, growing up as the son of an undertaker, I don’t so much remember having to wear my suit for every outing as I do having my father tie my necktie for me.
I would struggle into the starched white shirt with the detachable collar, and then pull on my ill-fitting little dark blue suit. I grew too fast and it always seemed the sleeves were a little too short and the cuffs of the pants a little too high above the tops of my wingtips. Then, tie in hand, I would run to find my father so he could tie it for me.
“What kind of knot are we going to do today, Sport?” he’d ask. “Windsor or Prince Albert?”
“Dad,” I’d protest. “Just do the normal!”
“All right, Sport,” he’d say, twinkle in his eye. “You know the drill.”
I’d lie down on the couch or the floor and he would hover over me, tongue peeking out the side of his mouth as he laboriously swirled the ends of the tie around into the fancy knots my hands could never seem to master. Then, when he was finished, he’d say, “All done, Sport,” and I’d hop up and off I’d go, all pressed out in my little suit.
I was so used to this almost daily ritual, that sometimes when I lie on my back, to this day, I expect to see my father’s face above mine, the scent of his Old Spice aftershave, his large hands fumbling with my tiny tie.
I could never understand why my mother scolded my father for tying my tie. If she caught my father in the act she would say, “For heaven’s sake, stop it, George!” or, “That’s terrible, George, it’s our son!”
And my father would invariably reply, “What, Mary? It’s the only way I know how to do it on someone else! If you don’t like it, yo
u do it then.”
My mother would then grow silent because she didn’t know how to tie a tie, and the issue would be dropped.
It wasn’t until later in life that I figured out what my mother was talking about.
My father enlisted in the Army at age 18 and served for three years in a graves registry unit before the two bombs were dropped. I can only imagine how horrific his job was as the Allied forces plowed through Europe and he followed in the war machine’s gruesome wake. The job, he told me, gave him compassion for the families of the soldiers he bagged and tagged and then buried under French soil. When the war ended, and he was discharged, he opened up a funeral home in his home state and married my mother. I think helping others deal with death must have been his way of coping with the atrocities he saw during the war.
My father confirmed my theory right before his death in a rare candid conversation. My mother had long since died, and my father lay dying of pancreatic cancer in a nursing home. He told me that he couldn’t stand the fact that “The only thing I could do was collect their tags and properly identify them while their family was about to see a sedan pull up outside their house somewhere in America.”
We talked and reminisced some more. I asked him if he remembered how he used to make me lie down to tie my ties when I was a little boy.
“Yeah, I remember,” he replied.
“Could you really not do it unless I was lying down?” I asked him.
“Hell, no!” he had replied. “I can tie my own tie without lying down. I did it just to get a rise out of your mother!”
“So all those years—”
He cut me off. “Yup, all those years I was just giving your mother a hard time.”
We both had a good laugh.
I tied a Windsor knot in his necktie less than a week after our conversation.
CHAPTER 50
Thaleia
Contributed by a fisherman
People are insatiably curious about the particulars of the business I work in. I still haven’t figured out if it’s the mystery surrounding death or the sheer fact that most people are generally ignorant of the basic workings of the business. I get bombarded with all sorts of crazy questions. When I am with a group of people I don’t know I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut when the subject of work comes up because I know the questions that are going to follow. No, the dead do not sit up; no, I have never seen a dead person move, it’s impossible; and yes, I am a man who can do makeup. Then the stupid ringer question always follows: “Do you believe in ghosts?”
I hate this question because not only do I feel compelled to answer truthfully, but it opens up a whole other line of questioning. I tell people that not only do I believe in ghosts, but I can prove their existence. This floors them… always.
“How can you prove it?” the offended party then asks.
“Well, for starters, my wife refuses to sleep at home alone—”
Thus begins my dissertation on how I know ghosts exist. It’s really simple. Allow me to explain:
My wife and I bought a townhouse in the section of the city that’s undergoing an urban renaissance. It’s a massive old run down Victorian we spent the better part of six months renovating. In the chaos of working on the house it was hard to detect the paranormal activity, but once we moved in, we realized that our house had come with its very own ghost.
Before I moved into our new house I didn’t believe in ghosts; it just wasn’t logical. I work in a business where I am around dead people all day. My thought was, once you were dead, that was it, you were dead, end of story. That changed starting with our first night in our new house.
My wife, Sara, and I were awakened sometime in the middle of the night.
“What time is it?” Sara asked.
“I have no idea, our alarm clocks aren’t working,” I said scratching my head, puzzled.
“Do you hear that?” Sara whispered.
“Yeah, sounds like a party,” I said.
And indeed we could hear music downstairs.
“You think it’s some sort of surprise?” she asked. “It sounds like there are a lot of people in our house.” Sure enough, over the music, the sound of muted laughter, talking, and the clinking of ice in glasses wafted up the stairs.
“Who would have thrown it, especially so late like this?” I fumbled for my watch on the nightstand.
“My parents?” Sara suggested.
I looked at my watch irritably. It read after midnight. “Don’t they realize tomorrow is a work day?”
“I don’t know. They’re random like that.”
“Well, let’s go check out the party.” I sighed and swung the bedroom door open. The light from downstairs filtered up into the upstairs hallway.
Sara put on her robe and followed me.
We went downstairs and found nothing but an empty first floor, all the lights on, and the stereo blaring at near full volume.
I ran over and clicked off the stereo receiver. The silence was deafening.
“You did hear the people, right?” Sara said, standing in the middle of the foyer, looking around, bewildered. I just nodded and began turning off the lights.
“Sonofabitch!” I said when we got upstairs. Our alarm clocks were both glowing their red digits. I fingered the softball bat I had retrieved from the basement, a great sense of unease settling over me.
After that, we were very careful about keeping track of which lights and appliances we turned off. The problem persisted. I wondered if my house experienced weird electrical surges that turned things on. I had an electrician come and look at the wiring. He certified my electrical system to be in perfect working condition and suggested, “Maybe you have a ghost.”
I was beginning to think we did. When my car keys started getting hidden, I was sure.
It seemed our ghost had a sense of humor.
My new morning ritual included searching for my car keys. I always hung them on the hook next to the kitchen door when I got home. Every morning they were gone. They were never hard to find. I just had to look a little. Sara, a high school English teacher, nicknamed our ghost Thaleia after the Greek goddess of comedy. She thought it was funny that Thaleia hid my keys. I was glad she was amused.
“Wouldn’t be so funny if it were happening to you,” I grumbled on more than one occasion as I tore through the house, late for work.
In addition to Thaleia’s little jokes, like turning on the televisions, getting into bed with us, and the occasional smell of potpourri in different rooms of the house, she liked to play bigger tricks on us. The biggest one I can recall was during the summer after we moved into our house. Sara and I were going on a week-long cruise to Bermuda. The morning before we were set to leave, Sara called to me from the guest bedroom. “Dan, did you move my dress?”
“What dress?” I replied, frantically packing all my stuff last minute, my usual M.O.
“The one I wanted to wear on one of the formal nights,” Sara said. “It was white with the big red and black polka dots on it.”
“Never seen it.” I had no idea what she was talking about.
She strolled into our bedroom, hands on hips. “Well, damn it, Dan, I left it right there hanging on the frame of the closet in the guest room not more than fifteen minutes ago!” She stamped her foot. “You had to have moved it. It didn’t just get up and walk off on its own!”
“I’ll help you look for it, but I promise, babe, I didn’t touch it.”
We searched high and low and ended up heading off to catch our flight one dress short.
Upon our return a week later our next-door neighbor, Mr. Williams, greeted us from his usual spot on his front porch—leaning against one of the pillars. He tipped his cabbie hat. “Hi there, Sara.” He tipped it again. “Dan. You all coming back from the beach?” He scratched his grizzled face and took a drag of his cigarette. He smoked it out of a holder.
“Nope,” Sara chirped, “just coming back from a wonderful trip to Bermuda.”
“Huh,” Mr. Williams said, and scrunched up his face.
I could tell something didn’t sit well with him. He spent a lot of time on his front porch watching the world go by, and was, essentially, the neighborhood watchman.
“How long you been gone?”
“A week,” Sara replied.
“Well, someone had one hell of a party in your house two nights before last. Lots o’ carrying on, talkin’, laughin’ and such… it went on until all hours. I thought about going over there and havin’ a highball.” He laughed a phlegmy, smoker’s laugh.
Sara and I looked at each other and exchanged glances. We knew who had hosted the party.
“Must have been my brother having his friends over for a party or something,” Sara said.
“Or could have been the ghost,” I chimed in, joking with Mr. Williams.
We all laughed, but for different reasons.
“Well, I hope your brother didn’t ruin the house too much. Sounded right wild,” Mr. Williams said.
We agreed.
When Sara went upstairs to drop her bags, I heard a scream. I ran up the steps and found her pointing to her polka dot dress hanging in the middle of her closet; the other clothes seemed pushed away from it. “Holy—”
“Take it easy, babe. Maybe Thaleia wanted it for that party she threw,” I said.
“Not funny.”
What could we do? We had a ghost. She liked to play with the electricity and hide things from us, end of story. The incident with the dress really got me thinking, though. I began to think about all the people that must have been born and died in the house over the past 120-plus years and I decided to do a little research. I went downtown to the local historical society and located the builder for all the homes on the block and then located the tax records for my house dating back to 1879. On a hunch, I wrote down all the names of the owners of the house and the years the property changed hands.
