by Andrew Post
They paused their talk while passing other customers in their carts going the other way. They were encountering other shoppers more frequently as they approached the grocery side of the store.
“I still don’t like this,” Jolene said once they were alone on Deluxo Boulevard again.
“How is it different from what we’ve been doing?”
“Well, for one, we were never selling their body parts. Or cutting them up. We drain them, put in the embalming fluid, get them dressed, get their eyes glued, get their makeup on—”
“I know the process, Jo,” Amber said. “I just mean, sure, this is gonna be a little more invasive than what we’ve done before but it’s still dealing with the dead. The shock of seeing a dead body, to us, is long gone. It’s kinda what makes us perfect for this, a clean transition.”
“It’s still people we’re selling.”
“Again, they aren’t going to miss it. And again, we’re helping others by doing this. Remember that.”
They hummed along in the cart for a few seconds, silent, passing the tire department and the auto body supplies, then the quarter-mile of wall space made up of nothing but TV after TV after TV all blaring the same thing at once, slightly out of sync with each other.
“It’s also sad that people have to get help this way, that it takes getting what they need through the black market just to live.”
“Well, be rich and white and you can be top of the list to get your needed organ. Be a senator, be a mayor, be the guy who owns the golf course. See? We’re like a couple of Robin Hoods – except we’re even better than him because we’re not taking from nobody who will miss what we steal.”
“The real Robin Hood didn’t steal from the rich. He stole from anybody. And it was all to fund his revolution. He was basically a 1600s terrorist.”
“You really know how to suck the fun out of a thing, don’t you?” Amber said. “Keep going straight here, we need coolers and dry ice next.”
Ten minutes of driving later and they were at the back corner of the store where the camping supply goods were. There they got three Coleman lunch pail-style ice chests. In the section with toilet paper, paper towels, and garbage bags, they threw into the side-basket of their golf cart four rolls of double-thickness and strength Saran Wrap. And up at party supplies (they had to press the red button on the dash to get directions) they got four gallons of dry ice and two pairs of the special insulated gloves required by law to be purchased with any sale of dry ice.
Only four of the one hundred seventy-five check lanes the store had were open. Jolene angled their soft rubber bumper into the swarm of golf carts and put it in park to wait. She noticed a round-faced boy in a baby seat clamped to the top of another golf cart eyeballing them as he contemplatively nursed on a popsicle. Jolene glanced next to her, where the kid was looking, into the side-basket of their cart.
She leaned over close to Amber to whisper, “Is it wise to be buying all this in one go like this?”
Amber put away her phone. “What do you mean?”
“Look at what we’re buying. We basically have the dismember-a-human-body-at-home kit in our basket right now. Anyone with half a brain could look at this and put together what we’re up to.”
“So?”
“So it looks bad, Amber.”
“Let me ask you, did you ever work retail?”
The line moved, Jolene inched them forward. “Yeah, at Kmart, in high school. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“So I guarantee you we could add a couple of shovels and a bottle of bleach to what we already have in our basket,” Amber said, “and nobody who works here would bat an eye. These people get paid minimum wage, which means minimum give-a-shit.”
“Maybe you’re right. But we still should’ve found a way to pay in cash,” Jolene said. “A credit card leaves a trail. And that still leaves the question, does that have enough room on it for all this?”
“It’ll be approved. And, yes, if we had cash, that would’ve been the better approach, true, but we don’t so we can’t. Don’t get weird when we get up there, okay? We’re apprentice butchers. That’s the cover, should we need one.”
“Okay, okay. Apprentice butchers.”
The family ahead of them buying twelve cases of hot dogs and only twelve cases of hot dogs finally paid and moved on. The teller stepped out of his little booth with his scanner gun ready in his holster, khaki pants and green vest on – and paused.
Jolene and Amber, in the front seat of their golf cart, also paused.
“Miss Morris, Miss Hawthorne,” Cornelius said, “what a pleasant surprise.”
The undertakers couldn’t put together a word between them. Cornelius came around to Jolene’s side and began zapping barcodes. “Coolers, huh? Planning on doing some tailgating this Fourth of July weekend? Looks like you got some plastic wrap for the leftovers too…and a chainsaw.”
Amber leaned across Jolene and whispered through her teeth, “Say a fucking word, Cornelius, and I only have to shout three words of my own and your job here is toast.”
Moving around to the other side, Cornelius continued zapping barcodes, a line of sweat running out of his high hairline. “Whatever do you mean? I just see two young ladies preparing for a weekend barbecue. Got your dry ice here for making fun drinks and painter’s suits to…clean up after your guests. What’s out of the ordinary here?”
“I’m serious. ‘He’s a necrophile.’ That’s all I gotta shout.”
“Perhaps we could come to some sort of arrangement. Consider my silence a favor that you two may be inclined to repay, maybe?”
“We have you by the balls here,” Amber said, “not the other way around. Is that not evident?”
“Gossip is just gossip,” Cornelius said, zapping the chainsaw’s barcode. “I can find a new job. But if what I think you two are planning to do later today is accurate, given the items you’re purchasing at such low, low prices.…”
“Listen to me, and listen good—” Amber started to say.
“I have your total when you’re ready.” Cornelius stepped behind his booth and swiveled the screen out so they could see their total. He smiled, holding out the card scanner for them in two hands as if presenting frankincense. “That’ll be three hundred and eighty-nine dollars and twenty-two cents. Will that be debit or credit?”
“Credit.” Amber swiped the card, and crossed her fingers.
Ten awful seconds passed before the screen flashed green, approved.
“Have a good day, ladies, and thank you for shopping at Mega Deluxo,” Cornelius said with the receipt out for them to take. “Would tomorrow be okay for me to swing by for a visit?”
Amber and Jolene exchanged a look and Amber snatched the receipt from him. “Fine.”
Outside, they filled the back of the hearse with their purchases, got in, Jolene volunteering to drive this time, lit up smokes, turned on the radio, and headed for home.
“Are we really gonna let him?” Jolene said.
Amber dropped the glove box and shook some powder out onto it. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Do you have a dollar?”
“No. And when did you buy that, might I ask?”
“Yesterday,” Amber said and scooped some coke with her pinkie nail and snorted it that way.
“The day you said, straight to my face, that you weren’t buying anything from Slug.”
“Yes, I know, I know, I know, but listen, after tonight none of this piddly little shit is gonna matter. We’ll be out of the hole and probably with money to spare, if our Russian friend back home has two good kidneys. If all of him is good, we’re looking at close to a million.”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Jolene said. “I just want it done and over with.”
“Want some of this?”
Jolene, at the next red light, glan
ced over. “Just a pinch.”
But before she could hook her fingernail under the little pile to take some, Amber slammed the glove box shut – nearly with Jolene’s finger inside – throwing a puff of scattering white everywhere.
“What the fuck? That Pretty Woman shit isn’t funny.” Jolene said, until she saw Amber was staring at the side mirror. “What is it?”
Jolene tried angling her rearview mirror around, looking past the heaps of bags in the back of the hearse, through the rearmost windows. Just cars, every windshield blaring morning light at her eyes.
“There’s a cop back there,” Amber said, “next lane over, like five cars back.”
Jolene couldn’t angle her mirror around to see what Amber was talking about, but still believed her. “Do you think Cornelius called them when we left?”
“Maybe. Fucking shit, I’ll kill that pervert.”
“Shit, Amber, look,” Jolene said, having angled her rearview mirror the other way.
“What?”
“The silver car, on my side. It’s that guy.”
“What guy? What’re you talking about?”
“Don’t look. But…you know, look. Over there. The Lexus.”
Amber leaned, pulled her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose and squinted over them. “Holy shit, it is him. Roll down your window.”
“No.”
“I wanna discuss his rudeness with him.” Amber beat a fist on the horn, the hearse sounding a half-hearted blat. The drivers next to them and ahead of them all glanced their way, but not the guy in the Lexus. He was holding the wheel in both hands, staring straight ahead, talking to himself or maybe singing a slow, sad song.
“Roll down your window,” Amber said.
“There is a cop back there, Amber,” Jolene said.
“Roll down your window.”
“No.”
The light changed.
“Follow him.”
Jolene groaned. She knew there was no point in arguing. She threw on her blinker and wedged the hearse over a lane, then another, settling in behind the Lexus. The cop, Jolene saw in her mirror, turned off. False alarm.
They followed the Lexus through a few intersections, into the part of St. Paul where it became nothing but fast-food joints and bookstores – catering mostly to the university students. It was a neighborhood Jolene and Amber both knew well; it was where they’d gone to school, around where Slug lived too. It was one of the few sections of the Twin Cities Jolene knew like the back of her hand. Confidence gaining, and also wanting to have a chat with the man who dumped a dead Russian in their driveway before speeding off, Jolene pressed the accelerator to swarm up large in the Lexus driver’s mirrors. The hearse made its rattling and pealing sound being put through the paces like this, but Jolene wouldn’t let him evade them – plus chasing some random guy around the city meant more time before having to help Amber disassemble a dead body back home. Little wins.
The Lexus pulled into the parking lot of a strip mall and settled itself into a spot in front of Jerry’s Organic Grocer & Wine Shoppe. Though it was a handicapped spot, Jolene swung the hearse in and rolled down her window just as the guy, who apparently hadn’t noticed them following him, was getting on a baseball cap and frowning at himself in the rearview mirror.“Hey,” Amber said, loud, deafening Jolene. “Hey, prick, look over here.” She tore the gum out of her mouth and lobbed it out the window where it smacked onto his, and held.
He glanced around, spotted Jolene and Amber mashed into the same window of the car next to him, and went wide eyed. He hummed down his passenger window, the gum going down into the door with it. “What are you two doing here? How’d you know where I—”
“I don’t think so, asshole,” Amber said, “we’re gonna ask the questions right now. What was with last night? We never agreed to take him.”
“Look, I’m really sorry about that. But I had to. I had to have him out of my house.”
“We would’ve taken him,” Amber said, “but we had to discuss it first, between us. Patience is a virtue, you know. In ten minutes we would’ve gladly taken him.”
He glanced between Amber and Jolene, Jolene unable to keep steady eye contact with him.
“She doesn’t look like she believes that,” he said. “And last night it looked like, to me, she was on the verge of freaking out and doing something stupid.”
“Hey,” Jolene said, “I’m new to this, okay?”
“I apologize,” he said, “but I had to get out of there. Did you, uh…get rid of it? I was planning on coming back today to apologize, I swear.”
“No, we haven’t done it yet,” Amber said. “We were too busy discussing what it might be worth to you. And now with added interest, for assholery.”
“I would pay you whatever you asked,” he said, “I really would, but it might have to wait. My money situation hasn’t changed since last night. I don’t have any money. Can we talk about this later? I have to get to work.”
Amber dropped the glove box open again – everything inside now dusted slightly – and snatched out one of the Hawthorne Funeral Home business cards and flicked it across the empty space between the cars. “Call us. And we’ll pay you.”
He stared at them, holding the business card. “What are you two?”
“We’re entrepreneurs,” Jolene said, dropped the hearse into reverse and pulled them out of the spot. They rejoined the morning rush hour and wove their way through the side streets, what she hoped were shortcuts, back toward the funeral home.
“Why did you say we’d pay him for the body?” Jolene asked.
“If we get what Rhino says we’ll get for the Russian,” Amber said, “then we’ll have enough to spare.”
“We hope. I mean, really, Amber, you’re counting on a lot of people staying true to their word.”
“What choice do I have? It’s this or the bank takes the house. And, though it’s sorta fucked up to say, I’d trust a total stranger who I only know through their text messages more than the fucking bank at this point.”
“All right, all right, but what about paying Frank for the body?”
“It’s like my dad used to say. Whatever a person is to you, if you put money in their hand, they become your friend. No, it doesn’t always work, but I can tell that guy’s a lot like us – he’s new to this. And if we throw him a couple bucks, he’ll remember that. People are a lot more likely to fuck someone over whom they’ve given money to, lost money to. We’re buying him, in a matter of speaking.”
Jolene lit a cigarette. “How much for a kidney again?”
“Two hundred thousand dollars.”
“For the set?”
“No. Each.”
Jolene sighed out her drag. “Okay.”
* * *
Amber and Jolene, covered head to toe in plastic suits, goggles, and booties, crunched over plastic sheets they had laid down on the floor.
As was custom, Amber said, “On three,” and lifted the Russian off the drawer, onto a gurney, and then on a second count of three from the gurney to the slab. Amber found an available outlet for the extension cord and Jolene stood ready with the cling-wrap and a cooler, a look on her face like her mind had abandoned the warm cradle of her skull for a faraway destination.
“So where do you think we should start?” Amber said, muffled behind her paper mask. Her blue eyes, brought out by the white-white painter’s suit, flicked over to Jolene. “Or should we both go try to barf again first?”
“I don’t think I have anything left,” Jolene said, staring at the corpse. The cooler felt very heavy in her hand and her heart was in her throat. “What does Rhino say to start with?”
“He didn’t,” Amber said, setting aside the saw to thumb through her text chain. “He just says ‘drain the cow, bottle the blood, and get it down to thirty-five degrees, then begin taking t
he cow apart.’ That’s all.”
“We did the blood,” Jolene said, motioning toward the refrigerator drawer with the three milk jugs they’d dug out of the recycling, now filled to the brim with Russian red with the digital thermometer punched down through the cap of one. “So do we just hack his legs off or…? Fuck, I can’t believe I just heard myself say that.”
Amber pulled off her goggles and mask, a red line pressed in across the bridge of her nose and both cheeks, and said, “Maybe you should leave this to me, like we previously agreed.”
“I want to help.”
“I know you do, Jo, but we still have two funerals – one tomorrow morning and one on Sunday. We need to get those started. So let’s say we just go to our separate corners of the workroom and do our own thing. We’ll break for lunch – if we can stomach the idea – and maybe if I’m running behind you can help me in the afternoon. Sound like a plan?”
Jolene nodded. “Yeah, I like that. I’m really sorry, but…I just can’t. Not yet.”
“It’s fine. Go get some coffee started.” Amber picked up the chainsaw and engaged its electric motor with the thumb switch. The machine numbed her hands with its idling putter and grumbled a nasty, hungry note, ready to be fed. “I got this.”
Jolene took off her goggles and mask and paced out of the room in her plastic booties covering her sneakers. She closed the door behind her, crossed through the display room, every empty casket open and waiting, and into the kitchen. She poured coffee beans into the grinder and started it, blowing every other sound away. But when she stopped, the crunching and sharp whine of the electronic motor continued, ringing in her ears, coming through the walls a few rooms over. She bolted to the bathroom, only thinking she didn’t have any more to throw up.
Chapter Five
Frank wheeled the boxes of apples and pears over to the display case, under its cosmetic lighting, and began arranging them two at a time into a neat pyramid. The store was quiet today. Most of his coworkers were his daughter’s age. They chatted to each other about movies and music, and often hushed and pretended to act busy when Frank came wheeling by with a fresh box of produce to put away. He was probably thought of as the weird old guy, but he was fine with this. He wanted to focus on this simple task now and think about nothing else. Two apples on the pyramid, two more, two more. Careful of knocking the entire thing over, he completed the apples and started in on the pears. He heard footsteps approaching from behind him and his hands paused, pears in both fists. He closed his eyes, expecting the next thing he heard to be a gunshot – then oblivion.
