by Joss Cordero
The plush carpet muffled his steps. At the end of the hall stood a handsome grandfather clock, a symbol of tradition and of time ticking for all men. To the left was Mr. Fiorello’s office and the casket selection room, a dormitory of deluxe double-decker beds; those on top stood open or half open to reveal opulently cushioned interiors; caskets too costly to keep in stock were displayed in framed photographs: gold plated, elaborately carved, or oversized (increasingly popular for the weight-challenged loved one), with adjustable headrests for the restless dead.
To the right were the two viewing rooms, and it was in the first of these that Zach saw a body stretched out on a couch, hands folded on its chest like a proper corpse. But the corpse was breathing.
Creeping silently across the thick soft carpet, Zach saw it was Fiorello.
He took out his knife and held it close to Mr. Fiorello’s neck. His first impulse was to slash the funeral director’s throat for betraying him and calling him a sick fucker. Zach did not forget such things.
He would’ve been pleasantly surprised to know that Mr. Fiorello looked back on his former night watchman’s reign as a golden age. Zach too saw it as a golden age. During that entire year he hadn’t needed to create corpses. His soul had been satisfied with the corpses he attended here. Until Mr. Fiorello fired him and then squealed on him.
And here was the big mouth himself, drooling as he slept. When Zach thought about it, it seemed incredible how much he’d admired this drooling traitor. On second thought, he wouldn’t kill him while asleep. He wanted Mr. Fiorello to know what a mistake he made in getting rid of such a talented employee who could’ve become one of Florida’s foremost embalmers.
With his free hand Zach shook the sleeping man awake.
Fiorello opened his eyes, waking from a delightful dream into a nightmare. “Oh Jesus.”
“You shouldn’t have gone to the police.”
“I didn’t go to the police,” answered Fiorello, alarmed to find Zach’s eyes meeting his for the first time in their relationship, if relationship was the word.
“They know all about me, and you’re the only one who could’ve told them.”
Fiorello managed to keep his tone as soothing and sympathetic as ever. “I swear it wasn’t me.”
“Then who could it have been?”
Pinned by Zach’s crazy eyes as well as the knife at his throat, Fiorello didn’t hesitate to shift the blame. “It was that private eye.”
“What private eye?”
“The one who came around here asking questions. He already knew about you. I didn’t tell him anything. He just came around. I didn’t say a word.”
“But he must’ve known I worked here.”
“I have no idea how he found out.”
“What’s his name?”
“Smoker. I’ve got his card. It’s in my office. If you’ll allow me . . .”
Zach let Mr. Fiorello slowly rise, and nudged him toward the office with the sharp tip of his knife.
Fiorello touched a wall switch, and his office was flooded with the warm peachy glow in which he had counseled and comforted countless clients. Now he was facing the biggest counseling challenge of his life. He had learned his counseling methods from his father, while nowadays students at colleges of mortuary science received special courses in psychology. Fiorello felt certain these courses didn’t cover counseling a homicidal maniac.
He opened his top desk drawer, wishing to God he had a gun in it, but funeral directors don’t carry guns. Their customers are already dead. Out of the corner of his eye he looked for something he could brain Zach with. His eyes alighted on a Heavenly Harmony brass keepsake cremation urn. But the pressure of the knife in the back of his neck told him this was not the opportune moment for the Heavenly Harmony brass keepsake cremation urn. If it came down to a struggle, Zach was all muscle, and he, Fiorello, had allowed himself to get soft, hiring people like Zach to do the heavy work while he limited himself to jobs that required finesse, like shaping the mask of the dead. And selling.
Now was the time for selling. He handed Zach the PI’s card. “This is the guy you want. Not me. I’ve done my best to protect you.”
Zach still looked dubious. “If he’s a private eye, somebody must’ve hired him.”
Anxious to throw any bait at the maniac, Fiorello quickly ran through the cast of possible players and reached for the first that came to mind. “It was the girl you attacked on the boat.”
“Tara?”
The peculiar way he said the name made Fiorello realize he’d just signed the girl’s death warrant.
Zach stuck the card in his pocket. “You fired me, and I had the makings of a great embalmer.”
“You’re absolutely right. I made a mistake and I regret it. I’m not perfect. I’m only human,” continued Fiorello in the tones of the professional condoler.
Zach studied Mr. Fiorello in silence, thinking it over. Fiorello had seen the look before, in the eyes of the bereaved when they weighed the cost of the casket being pushed on them, a mahogany Presidential Masterpiece hand rubbed for sixteen hours, against the cardboard Eco-Coffin they’d originally had in mind. The moment was always a tense one.
To clarify matters Fiorello added, “Your unconventional approach is what confused me. I now see that decorating the corpses as you did was simply an expression of your sympathy for the deceased. But at the time it was a shock to me. I wasn’t used to such original work. And I was half smashed on eggnog.”
Zach continued studying him thoughtfully.
“In time,” continued Fiorello smoothly, “we could’ve reached an understanding. And it’s not too late.” No, it’s not too late. I’ll rehire the murderous fucker and he can tinsel their tits to his heart’s content. “Let’s start all over, Zach. I just lost my night watchman. Come and take your old job back.”
“I don’t believe you mean it.”
“Have I ever lied to you? You were like a son to me.”
“You threw me out, and now they’re looking for me. It’s too late.”
“It’s never too late. Except for them . . .” He gestured toward the rear of the building where corpses cooled in preparation for their big day. Beyond the preparation room was the crematorium, where ashes to ashes was the order of the hour.
“I wish I could trust you, Mr. Fiorello.”
Fiorello was impressed by how well Zach’s funereal voice matched the tone of the establishment. Maybe he really was meant for the business. Zach himself had no question he was made for it. Glancing around the tasteful office that should’ve been his, he felt how easily he fit in. If anybody was the servant of the dead, it was him. “It would be nice,” he added.
“Hell yes. It would be just the thing for you,” said Fiorello, hope rising, as it did when he saw a client veering toward a solid bronze Promethean with double-locking fourteen-karat gold hardware, a casket that required eight pallbearers to lift. I’ve sold him, he thought, looking at the madman optimistically.
“I have the touch,” said Zach. “And I’ll prove it to you.”
“You will, you will,” said Fiorello enthusiastically.
“And your soul will see.”
Fiorello didn’t like this reference to his soul, but this wasn’t the time to quibble over terminology. “I’ve got a fresh loved one in the refrigerator right now. Wait a minute, here’s his picture. It’s always best to shape the face the way it was when living.”
Zach looked at the double photo—one front view and one profile. They didn’t arouse him, men never did, proving he wasn’t perverted no matter what the papers said. It appeared to be a mug shot, so chances were the deceased had died of a bullet wound. He looked like the type to inflict a bullet wound rather than receive one. But the challenge for the embalmer, aside from any bullet wounds, was that the guy had about a hundred braids, and every corpse, no matter what t
he hairstyle, had to have his hair shampooed, so all those braids would have to be unbraided and rebraided. Probably Mr. Fiorello would hire a hairdresser.
“Let’s go to the prep room and dig in,” suggested Fiorello. He led the way through to the back wing of the building, the knife against his neck guiding him along. He switched on the bright unforgiving laboratory lights. If you could make a loved one look good under these cruel lights, the loved one would look like a million bucks in the color-corrected lamps of the viewing rooms.
Ignoring the blade at the back of his neck, Fiorello gestured grandly. “A mortician is both a scientist and an artist.”
“That’s what we are, Mr. Fiorello.”
“Of course it is.” To keep agreement going, he waxed eloquent. “With science we hold off decay, and with art we erase death’s imprint.”
He taped the deceased’s mug shot on a cupboard near the porcelain table, and filled the embalming machine with chemicals and water. The odor of formaldehyde flooded Zach with nostalgia, sharply bringing back the golden year now gone.
Laying out his trays of instruments, Fiorello reverently named each one of them, to indicate Zach’s training had begun. “Trocar, aneurysm hook, cannulae, ligature . . .” Zach liked the words; they sounded appropriately important.
“Suit up,” said Mr. Fiorello, opening the closet that held the protective garments.
They put on white paper gowns and booties, masks and gloves.
“We’re in this together, Zach,” said Mr. Fiorello more confidently. “Tonight a star is born. I’m going to teach you everything I know, things I learned from my father, tricks I’ve learned on my own, a lifetime of knowledge.” Just keep the maniac occupied, he told himself, until you can ring for the police. He surveyed Zach in his disposable ensemble. “You’re perfect for the job. It’s obvious to me now.”
“Too bad it wasn’t obvious to you before.”
“I admit that freely, but that’s behind us. We’ve got a fresh corpse and a clear mind.” Fiorello turned away toward the cooler, and Zach put a choke hold on him and pressed.
Fiorello thrashed around until suffocation was complete. Then Zach undressed him and laid him out on the porcelain table, with a head block underneath his head to raise his face. The tools were at hand.
“I know you’re watching, Mr. Fiorello, and now you’re going to see who it is you called a sick fucker and fired. Now you’re going to see what I can do.” There were tears in Zach’s eyes when he thought how it could’ve and should’ve been.
As he carefully shaved the corpse’s face, he thought, I’ll embalm Mr. Fiorello now, and when he’s done I’ll do the guy in the refrigerator.
Slowly, conscientiously, he massaged and washed the body with germicidal soap, not neglecting any orifice, not at all repelled by the fact that Mr. Fiorello had shit and pissed himself. So far, so good. But he knew that professional embalming wasn’t as simple as washing and grooming and filling cavities with fragrant herbs like Aunt Emmy taught him. Here he had to fill the leaking cavities with wads of cotton. Until today he’d been an artist of the dead. Today he had to be what Mr. Fiorello said, an artist and a scientist. He had to follow correct procedure.
During that golden year he had studied what he could, but the trouble with being an autodidact was you didn’t get to go to classes for hands-on training. He examined the eye caps, little plastic things that fit underneath the eyelids to give that healthy rounded look. With a hook he raised Mr. Fiorello’s left eyelid and tried to get the cap to stay inside, but it slid back out like the second eyelid of a cat. Glue, he remembered. He applied glue to the cap, and began again, but his nervousness must’ve screwed up his angle because instead of grappling onto the lid he hooked the eyeball out. It hung on Mr. Fiorello’s cheek, staring remorsefully at Zach.
“Sorry, Mr. Fiorello. But this wouldn’t have happened if you’d sent me to embalming school.”
He shoved the eyeball back, jammed the cap on top, and lowered the lid, but either he didn’t shove it in far enough or he used too big a glop of glue, for the effect was strangely bulbous. He managed to insert the second cap without removing the eyeball, but he couldn’t get the lid to stick completely shut. So Mr. Fiorello was left glancing flirtatiously out of a half-lowered lid on one side and, on the other side, looking like a frog.
Straightening his back to get out the kinks, Zach found himself staring at the mug shot on the cupboard. The man with the braids was glaring at him, as if he knew that he was next and was growing impatient. “Your turn will come,” said Zach reassuringly.
He bent back down to do the mouth. As far as plumping out the features went, the mouth was more important than the eyes, especially on people like Aunt Emmy who had no teeth. Back in the holler they didn’t sew the gums together, but Mr. Fiorello did, and so Zach would do it too.
He threaded the needle gun, pulled back Mr. Fiorello’s lips, aimed for the top gum, and fired. The needle missed its mark and shot through the tongue instead. He yanked the needle and the wire out, but he must’ve yanked too hard because Mr. Fiorello’s tongue now hung out like a panting dog’s. Hoping he’d have better luck on the lower gum, he aimed but missed again, driving the needle through the lower lip. By the time he got the wire free, the lip was stretched so much it made him think of those African girls in picture books who wore plates in their lower lips to make them huge. He supposed they saw it as a sign of beauty. He tried to see it as a sign of beauty in Mr. Fiorello, but time was flying by and he couldn’t afford to worry about Mr. Fiorello’s gigantic lower lip. The main thing was to forge ahead, nail those gums top and bottom, and secure everything firmly shut. Obviously this needle gun routine took some practice; it was several more tries before he hit the bull’s-eye. In the end Mr. Fiorello was left with wires hanging out of his mouth like the threads on a shrunken head.
Now came the serious surgery. This is where he would excel. This is where he had experience. “You’ll see, Mr. Fiorello.”
From his yearlong studies he knew the incision should be an inch or two above the right collarbone. “Scalpel,” he said to an imaginary assistant.
He took his time and made a perfect incision. “What do you think of that, Mr. Fiorello?”
Having achieved this perfect incision, he pulled apart the slit with the embolism hooks so he could peer inside and figure out which was the carotid artery and which the jugular vein. Scrounging around with his hooks he drew out a vessel considerably thicker than the others, and felt sure it had to be the artery. “Ligature, please,” he said to his assistant.
He tied two pieces of string along the pulled-out loop of artery, took a pair of scissors, and cut between the knots. Then with a screwing motion, he managed to fit the bent metal end of the embalming tube into the section of the artery that rose up from the body, and pushed the knot around the tube to make sure it would stay in place. “First time, Mr. Fiorello, and I got it right.”
Next, the jugular.
You’d think, with all his experience, he would recognize a jugular vein, but he’d always made his incisions—as he thought of them now—a little bit higher up. He’d been more of a neck specialist.
Guessing which one was the jugular, he made his knots on what he hoped was the correct vein, snipped the vein apart, plugged the bottom end with what he thought was a drain tube, and hung it in the low sink.
Then he switched the embalming machine on high.
With a thrill he saw blood pouring out through the tube into the sink and knew he’d done it right. But it seemed to be running out fast. Too fast, he decided. So he tied a tighter knot around the vein and temporarily shut the blood flow off. Give it a rest, he thought.
Sections of the corpse already looked less gray with the embalming fluid pumping through it. “Looking good, Mr. Fiorello.”
While the pump was going, Zach decided he might as well go ahead and aspirate the organs
to prevent smelly and unseemly fluids from oozing out the nostrils and the eyes during the viewing. “We can’t have that, can we, Mr. Fiorello.” And then to his assistant, “Trocar, please.”
Just as he was about to plunge the sharp end of the aspirator tube into Mr. Fiorello’s belly button, he heard, or sensed, what sounded like a series of tiny pops. And they weren’t coming from the belly button vicinity.
Looking up, he was horrified to see the veins of Mr. Fiorello’s hands and arms and legs and groin were so bulged out with embalming fluid they were bursting open underneath the skin. And then with a violent pop, the veins erupted through the skin itself.
Zach stared in frozen fascination as Mr. Fiorello turned into a fountain, with little geysers of embalming fluid and blood squirting out of him. Fissures opened up along his arms and legs like sausages splitting in a frying pan.
Zach ran to the sink to untie the end of the jugular vein and release the pressure, but before he could reach it the jugular exploded, shooting blood all over the preparation room, while the carotid artery reared up and waved around like a spitting snake.
What was he supposed to do now? Where was Mr. Fiorello when he needed him?
Mr. Fiorello was right there, bubbling.
Slowly Mr. Fiorello’s eyes opened and tears of blood and embalming fluid rolled down his cheeks. From between his wired-together mouth, the same mixture gurgled out, causing the lips to move like a baby trying to speak. The last torrent shot from Mr. Fiorello’s nostrils like a gush of snot.
Zach looked down at the bubbling mess that had been Mr. Fiorello, and he realized that he wasn’t a great embalmer. He had killed a great embalmer.
Morning was streaming through the window. He’d been so absorbed he’d lost track of time. People would be here any minute, and all he had to show for his work was an exploding corpse.
Addressing the gurgling body, he quoted the great funeral director himself. “I made a mistake and I regret it. I’m not perfect.”