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  The best part of all of it was knowing that no matter what happened on the dance floor, it would go no further if I didn’t want it to. Of course, it would go no further if he didn’t want it to, also. Legally, I was paying Jack for his time and company, not for sex. Any monkeyshines we got up to later would be between two consenting adults, only. I’d never had a date turn me down, though, and I didn’t expect Jack to.

  If I wanted him, I’d have him, but even though he was lovely and a good dancer, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to take him to bed. Sam’s face still lingered on the edges of my mind, and though I figured Jack wouldn’t give a damn if I fucked him while I thought of another man, I would.

  For now it was enough to dance a lot, drink a little. Feel his hands on me and watch that smile. Sweat slicked us both and kept his hair back when he pushed it off his face. When I pressed my cheek to his, I resisted seeing if he tasted like salt.

  I’d half expected to get paged, but the night spun on without so much as a beep from my phone. I did, however, have a limit to my budget. When I gestured toward the stairs, Jack nodded. To my amusement, he didn’t wait for me to lead this time. He took my hand and wove us through the crowd with the same confidence he’d discovered on the dance floor.

  My ears still rang from the music as we reached the street. Jack hadn’t let go of my hand.

  All hell didn’t quite break loose, but it sure as shit rattled the bars of its cage.

  “You asshole!” The tall girl from earlier had quite a bit more liquor in her now. She stumbled out of the doorway, her eyeliner and lipstick smeared.

  Jack turned away, face pained again. His fingers tightened in mine, but I let go of his hand.

  He shot me an apologetic look, which I returned with a half shrug as we started walking.

  “Hey, Jack! Jackass! Don’t you walk away from me!”

  “C’mon, Kira, don’t.” This came from the marginally less drunk friend. “He’s not worth it!”

  Scenes like this were probably commonplace at 1:00 a.m. but I wasn’t usually the one involved in them. In fact, part of what I paid for was the privilege to not be swept up in interpersonal dramas from drunk barsluts showing off their thongs.

  “Fuck you, Jack!” Kira couldn’t let it go, apparently.

  Jack grimaced and pulled his cap from his back pocket. He put it on, but didn’t look at her.

  We hadn’t gone more than another few steps down the sidewalk when Kira launched herself at his back.

  Jack stumbled forward as she pummeled him, her legs and arms whaling akimbo. She didn’t actually manage to hit him more than once or twice, but the spectators leaped out of the way of her whirling-dervish performance. She was shrieking insults, mostly stupid and incoherent ones.

  Jack pushed her off him firmly and grabbed her arm at the same time so she wouldn’t fall on her drunk ass right there on the dirty pavement. She kept trying to hit him and missing, and though it shouldn’t have been funny I had to cover my mouth over a laugh.

  “Stop it,” Jack told her and gave her arm a little shake before letting her go. When she flew at him again she managed to knock his cap off. Anger crossed his face and he held her off with one arm while she struggled to get at his face with her nails.

  “I hope your Prince Albert fucking rips out and you have to piss through three holes!” she screamed.

  “Kira, c’mon,” her friend pleaded, reaching for her.

  Kira allowed herself to be led away, still shouting insults. Jack picked up his hat and brushed it off, but didn’t put it on his head. He won more points for that bit of common sense, even if he’d lost a few for dating an idiot like Kira.

  “Fuck,” he said after a minute. “I’m sorry.”

  His chest rose and fell rapidly, and his hands clenched at his sides. He was shaking, just a little. He reached to his pocket like a reflex, but then pulled it away.

  “It’s okay.” It wasn’t, quite, but I wasn’t going to make him feel worse than he obviously already did.

  He walked me back to the parking garage in increasingly uncomfortable silence. By the time we got to my car he wasn’t visibly angry any longer, but that didn’t really help. I unlocked Betty’s door and turned to him.

  “Well, Jack, it’s been interesting.”

  He ran his hand through his hair. “I hope…you had fun.”

  Three hundred bucks’ worth? Not so much. “Sure,” I said anyway, because there was no point in being a bitch.

  Jack straightened a little at that. “You didn’t have fun.”

  “No, no—”

  “Grace,” he said. “I know you didn’t. I’m really sorry. Shit. I’m oh-for-two, huh?”

  I leaned against my car to watch him. Again his hand drifted to his pocket and pulled away. I thought of the huff-breath-hold. “If you need to smoke, you can go ahead. I don’t care.”

  Not now, when I knew there was no way I’d have to taste smoke on his tongue.

  His look of relief was so vast I laughed. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one with a lighter emblazoned with a picture of the biohazard symbol. He offered me one, which I declined.

  We stood a few feet apart, me still leaning against my car and him leaning against the one parked next to it. He blew the smoke away from my face and visibly stopped twitching. We didn’t say anything until he’d puffed a few times. Then he looked at me.

  “Sweet car.” His eyes roamed over Betty’s lines, seeing her as she should be, maybe, instead of how she was.

  “It’s my bitchin’ Camaro,” I told him with a grin.

  Guys dig cars almost as much as they dig pussy.

  “Nice.”

  It wasn’t, really—it had rust spots and dings and dents and was saved from being a junker solely because of its “cool” factor rather than any extra-special care I’d given it.

  “It runs.” I opened the door. “That’s the best thing that I can say about it.”

  Jack drew in more smoke and let it out. “She wasn’t my girlfriend. We hooked up once or twice.”

  “You don’t have to explain things to me.”

  He shook his head. “Yeah, I know. But I am, okay?”

  In the parking garage’s harsh lighting he shouldn’t have looked so pretty, his face all smooth lines and curves. With a cigarette in his mouth and smoke squinting his eyes, he should’ve looked harder. Or at least older.

  “Look,” he said when I didn’t answer. “I’ll give you your money back.”

  “Mrs. Smith doesn’t offer refunds.”

  “I know.” He finished the cigarette and dropped it to the floor to grind it out beneath the toe of his black boot. “But this date really sucked, and I’m sorry.”

  “It wasn’t all that bad. You’re a good dancer.”

  His mouth tipped up a tiny bit. “Thanks. So are you. But that business with Kira…shit.

  That was fucked. I’m sorry.”

  “You can’t help it she’s a stupid cunt,” I told him, and Jack looked shocked for one second before he burst into laughter.

  “Can I give you some advice?” I asked, watching him laugh.

  He nodded. “Sure.”

  “Do you plan on doing this a lot?”

  He didn’t ask me what I meant by “this.” “Um…well, yeah.”

  “And you want to be good at it, right?”

  “Yes. For sure.”

  I studied him another moment. “First of all, don’t make appointments where you can’t smoke.”

  Surprise swirled around his mouth and eyes. “No?”

  “No. Watching you suck on that butt was like watching a baby going for its bottle.”

  He laughed, chagrined. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Just don’t make dates where you’re going to feel like you can’t be yourself. Because I have to tell you, Jack, that’s what’s going to work for you. Not trying to be someone else.”

  He nodded, slowly, and gave me an assessing glance. “I sucked that bad, huh?”

>   “No. Not really. But…” I thought of how to get my point across. “Okay, think of it this way. What am I paying you for?”

  “My time and company,” he answered promptly as he pulled out another cigarette and lit it.

  At least he got that right. “Exactly. But you have to act like these are real dates, Jack. You have to do your homework. Read the information Mrs. Smith sends you, and pay attention. Be a little more confident. Don’t make it so much like you’re waiting for permission to show me a good time. Just go for it.”

  “What if I’m guessing wrong?”

  “If you’re doing everything else right,” I said, “you won’t be.”

  He sighed. “Great.”

  I laughed and reached forward to push the hair out of his face. “And don’t go on dates where you’re likely to run into psycho barsluts.”

  “Well, that limits me.”

  We laughed together. I looked into my car but didn’t slide behind the wheel. He moved toward me, one arm sliding around my waist to hold me against his body.

  “Is this what you’re talking about?”

  Against his dark brows, his eyes looked very blue. Not a hint of green anywhere. His hair had stayed off his face this time.

  “Yes.”

  He inched me closer. “So…are we saying good-night?”

  “Yes, Jack.” I tempered it with a smile.

  He didn’t let me go. His fingers splayed on my hip. “Is it because of the way things went tonight?”

  I shook my head and answered honestly. “No.”

  “The cigarettes?”

  “Oh. No.” I meant that, too.

  Jack paused, his eyes searching my face but finding what, I didn’t know. “Do you think you might call me again?”

  “Sure.” I might. Or might not.

  “Great!”

  Then he let me go and stepped back to let me get in the car. The world shook a little and my body with it, because he gave me that smile again, that bright and shiny brilliant smile that made me want to dip him in butter and gobble him up.

  He sauntered away and I watched him go, and I realized something. That smile had almost made me forget Sam the stranger.

  I would definitely be calling Jack again.

  Chapter 04

  I didn’t have time to think of smiles or strangers for a few days. I had services to oversee and families to soothe. I know many people think what I do is morbid. Maybe even creepy. Few understand the purpose of a funeral director is not to take care of the dead, though that’s a part of it. My job is to care for those whose lives stutter in the face of their grief. To make the horrible task of saying goodbye as easy as it can never be.

  I appreciated Jared more than ever as the week began with three funerals on the same day.

  My dad and uncle had always had assistants, but when I took over, the business had initially dipped and I’d had to let them go. I’d turned it around quickly enough, largely in part by doing most everything by myself. Running the home wasn’t impossible to do on my own, but it was pretty damn difficult. Having Jared there to help me organize and arrange services was a luxury I hadn’t wanted to get used to.

  When a person dies in a hospital or nursing home, there are staff and gurneys available to make the transferal easy, but when a body needs to be picked up at a private residence, I never go alone. Most people don’t die conveniently by the nearest exit, and it can be too difficult to lift or transport a corpse down flights of stairs by myself.

  We got a death call early Tuesday morning. The woman, in her early thirties, had died at home but had been taken to the hospital. Her husband would be coming in to make the arrangements with me while Jared went to pick up the body.

  It’s easier with some than others. When the deceased passes after a long illness, or at an advanced age, for example. When it’s not a surprise.

  “It was such a shock.” The man in the chair in front of me cradled an infant against his chest. He wasn’t weeping, but he looked as if he had been. A little girl played quietly at his feet with the set of blocks I kept for kids. “Nobody knew this was coming.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told him, and waited.

  I’ve heard horror stories about families being pressured into buying the best caskets and vaults, or being forced to make decisions hastily. Some other funeral homes operated like revolving doors, shuffling people in and out as fast as possible. Mr. Davis deserved my time, though, and he could have as much of it as he needed.

  “She hated that van,” he said. The baby against him peeped and he shifted it. A boy. I could tell by the baseball bat on his outfit. “Why would she want to die in it?”

  It wasn’t a question that needed an answer, but he looked at me like he thought I should have one. I tried hard not to gaze at the little girl on the floor, or the baby in his arms. I tried hard to just look at his face. “I don’t know, Mr. Davis.”

  Mr. Davis glanced down at his children, then back up to me. “I don’t know, either.”

  Together we planned a simple service. He gave me the clothes he wanted her to wear, and her favorite colors of lipstick and eye shadow. His son fussed and he pulled a bottle from a small cooler bag to feed him while we talked. I had Shelly take the little girl to give her some cookies and juice.

  It was only routine to me, but for him it was the end of life as he’d known it. I did the best I could for him, but Mr. Davis left with the same blank gaze he’d had when he came in. When he’d gone, I went down to the embalming room to see if Jared had returned with Mrs. Davis. He had. Since he wasn’t yet licensed, he wasn’t able to actually do anything until I was there to supervise, but he’d set up the table and our supplies, and turned on some music.

  He was quiet, though, when we uncovered her. Usually Jared’s full of humor and jokes.

  Nothing disrespectful toward the people we’re taking care of or anything. Just a generalized goofiness. Today he wasn’t joking, or even smiling.

  He stared at her. “She’s so young.”

  I looked at Mrs. Davis. Her eyes closed, her face serene, skin pale and no longer flushed with the rosy glow of carbon-monoxide poisoning she’d have had when they found her. “Yes.

  She’s my sister’s age.”

  Jared looked startled. “Shit. That means she’s my sister’s age, too.”

  He turned to the sink, where he washed his hands vigorously. His shoulders hunched for too long. I’d forgotten Jared hadn’t yet had to deal with anyone like Mrs. Davis. He’d been with me for six months, and though we’d had our share of deaths from disease and old age, and a few accidents, we hadn’t had any suicides. We hadn’t, in fact, had anyone younger than forty-five.

  When he turned back to me, though, he looked under control. “Ready?”

  “Are you?” I hadn’t done anything to get started. We weren’t in a hurry.

  “Sure.” He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what we need to do first.” I offered this to remind him this was a job, no matter how disturbing it might be sometimes.

  Jared did, rattling off the steps of the procedures we needed to follow. But his eyes lingered too long on Mrs. Davis’s face, and he had to turn away a few too many times as we worked. I put a hand on his arm, finally.

  “Do you need to take a break?”

  Jared let out a long, slow breath, and nodded. “Yes. Want a soda?”

  “Sure.” I didn’t need a break, but I took one anyway.

  We both had cans of soda from the ancient machine I kept stocked in the lounge just down the hall. With its battered furniture and scarred flooring, it wasn’t the lounge we used for clients.

  Just a place for staff to eat lunch or kick back for a bit.

  Jared cracked open his can and stretched out on the worn sofa while I plopped onto a floral-print armchair with mismatched cushions. We drank in silence. From above I heard the faint pitter-pat of Shelly’s heels on the uncarpeted floor.

  “I guess we need some new insulation.”
I looked up at the drop ceiling, then at Jared.

  He nodded, staring at his can. “Yeah.”

  “It’s really bothering you, isn’t it.” I watched him study his can as if it was going to tell him something secret.

  He looked at me. “Yeah. Damn. Grace, I know it shouldn’t—”

  “It’s okay if it does, Jared. A big part of our job is compassion.”

  “It doesn’t bother you,” he said. “I mean…does it?”

  “Her being so young, you mean?” The cold bubbles tickled my throat and made me cough.

  Coffee would’ve been better, but that was all the way upstairs.

  “Yeah. And…the kids. I saw the little girl when she was with Shelly and you were still talking to the husband. I came upstairs after I brought Mrs. Davis in and she was there. She was what, maybe three?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “It doesn’t bother you,” Jared repeated.

  “It’s part of the job, Jared. My job is to make this as easy as possible for her husband and family, and to make sure she’s taken care of.”

  He rubbed at his eyes and tossed back some soda. “Yeah. I know. You’re right. It’s just hard, sometimes. Isn’t it?”

  I thought of the conversation I’d had so recently with Dan Stewart. “It’s sad, sure.”

  Jared shook his head. “Not just sad.”

  “Do you want me to finish her by myself?” I asked, generously, I thought.

  “No. I need the hours and it’s not like I won’t ever have to face this again.” He looked up at me. “But…how do you do it, Grace? How do you not let it bother you so much you can’t do it, but keep that compassion?”

  “I find a way to put it away at the end of the day,” I told him.

  “Like…?”

  “Like it’s a job,” I said. “Which it is. You have to find a way to be able to put it away at the end of the day.”

  “Even if you get a death call two hours after the end of the day?” Jared grinned.

  “Even then.” I finished my soda and tossed the can into the recycling bin.

  “So, what do you do?” he asked on the way back to the embalming room.

  What did I do? I went out and paid men to fulfill my fantasies. “I read a lot.”