Death & Stilettos

by Jason Krumbine

  “I didn’t say thank you,” Avery responds, feeling slightly miffed, but also a little happy that she’s not sitting here alone anymore.

  Thane shrugs. “I don’t need you to say it.”

  “Yeah?”

  Thane nods his head. “Turns out my love language isn’t words of affirmation.”

  Avery almost chokes on her beer, which, she’s ashamed to admit, does tastes worlds better than what was on tap. “Your what?”

  “It’s a book I’m reading,” Thane explains without a hint of embarrassment. “It’s called: The Five Love Languages.”

  Avery stares at him. “I’m hearing it, but I’m not believing it.”

  “Okay, well, hear me out first,” Thane says.

  “Does this have anything to do with me?” Avery asks him.

  “Excuse me?” Thane pretends to be clueless.

  “Oh, don’t play dumb.”

  “I’m not playing dumb,” Thane assures her.

  Avery pokes herself in the chest. “I have a boyfriend.”

  “You keep saying that,” Thane replies.

  “I keep saying it, because you keep hitting on me.”

  Thane looks at her with mock offense. “I hit on you?”

  “All the time,” Avery insists.

  “Well, I’m not doing it right now.”

  “Oh, you’re very much doing it right now.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m not.”

  “The bit about the five love languages?”

  “That’s an actual book,” Thane says. “That I’m really reading. And it’s not just about romantic love.”

  “Oh really?” Avery responds, far from being convinced.

  “Yes, really,” Thane responds. “It talks about how we receive love and how we give love. Everyone has a different love language. We need to learn how to speak each other’s language so that our love signals are properly received and understood.”

  Avery shakes her head. “I can’t believe these words are coming out of your mouth.”

  “I’m a complicated man.”

  “What are these five mythical love languages?” she asks.

  Thane starts counting them off on his fingers. “Words of affirmation.”

  “Which you say isn’t yours.”

  “Quality time,” Thane continues. “Receiving gifts, acts of service and physical touch.”

  Avery nods her head. “Alright. I see where this is going.”

  “You do?”

  “Physical touch?”

  Thane sighs. “It’s not like that.”

  “Does physical touch include sex?”

  “It can,” Thane answers.

  “That’s what I thought,” Avery says, satisfied that she’s figured him out.

  “But that’s not what this is about,” Thane says.

  Avery takes a swig from her beer, watching Thane silently for a second. He seems sincere. But, then, he always seems sincere to her. He looks her right in the eye and Avery feels both uncomfortable and excited.

  She breaks eye contact with him. “What’s your love language, then?”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s acts of service.”

  “And not physical touch?” Avery asks. “I’d think every man’s love language is physical touch.”

  “The book warns about that,” Thane explains. “The author suggests to focus on things that bring you happiness and not just moment pleasure.”

  Avery smirks. “You know, there’s a joke in there.”

  Thane gives her a self-deprecating smile. “I do. But I was hoping you’d let it slide.”

  Avery smiles back. “Acts of service? That’s how you express love?”

  “And that’s how I receive it,” Thane says.

  Avery chews the inside of her cheek. “This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Thane shrugs. “It works.”

  “Does it?” She leans across the table. “What’s my love language?”

  “I haven’t finished reading the book yet.”

  “That sounds like a copout.”

  “Only because you didn’t let me finish.” Thane leans across. There’s only an inch between their noses. His warm breath tickles her face. “I haven’t finished the book yet, but if I had to guess, I would say your love language is quality time.”

  “Quality time?”

  “Well, you were sitting here, upset that you’re all by yourself,” Thane points out.

  She can smell his musk and it smells good. Too good. The electricity between them is palpable. Avery fidgets, caught somewhere between being uncomfortable and enraptured by his gaze.

  She sits back. “I was not upset.”

  “My mistake,” Thane replies.

  “Damn straight.”

  Avery takes another pull from her beer, trying to clear the lusty cobwebs that were taking up residents in her head. “What are you doing here anyway?”

  “Killing time.” Thane glances at the clock behind the bar. “I’ve got an appointment to keep.”

  “What kind of appointment?” Avery asks, eager to talk about something other than their love languages.

  Thane pulls the manila envelope from his back pocket. “Appointment reaping.”

  Avery stares at the sealed envelope on the table. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “I thought these didn’t happen anymore.”

  Thane knocks back a swig from his beer. “They don’t. But every so often some rich guy gets enough money and the Council decides that it couldn’t hurt to have a couple extra million in the bank.”

  “Million?”

  Thane shrugs. “Honestly, I have no idea what it costs to reserve a grim reaper for your passing. But a million dollars sounds about right.”

  “I’ll say.” Avery just stares at the envelope.

  Thane watches her, idly spinning his bottle on the table. “You want in?”

  “Hmm?” Avery looks up at Thane. “What?”

  He nods at the envelope. “I’ll split the bounty with you.”

  Avery frowns. “I don’t need a handout.”

  “It’s not a handout.”

  “It sounds like a handout.”

  “Well,” Thane says, catching her eyes again. “It isn’t.”

  His dark blue eyes pull her in. It’s easy to get lost in that serene ocean.

  Avery looks away again, feeling her body flush with excitement. “I don’t want to take food out of your mouth.”

  He shrugs off her concerns again. “Come on. Besides, what else are you going to do tonight?”

  Avery glances her cellphone again. No new texts.

  “Exactly,” Thane says, finishing his beer. He gets to his feet. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”

  eleven

  “What the hell does a nine-fifteen appointment mean to you assholes?” John Moody growls at the two grim reapers. “Did you do a little sightseeing on your way here? Maybe you booked a hotel room so you could have a quick screw before doing your damn job?”

  Avery casts a sideways glance at Thane. “Fun?”

  Thane holds his hands up as if to say, “Sorry, even drop dead gorgeous men can make mistakes.” Although, Avery might have been imagining the “drop dead gorgeous” part herself.

  Thane and Avery are on the sixth floor of the Century City Clinic. It’s called a clinic, but it’s a hospital in every other respect. In fact, it’s the most well funded hospital in Century City.

  John Moody is ten minutes dead and was, up until ten minutes ago, ninety-five years old and the founder of Moody’s Movers, a popular chain of storage units and movers. He’s spent his last few days here at Century City Clinic in a private room, receiving last minute visits from friends and family as he slowly died.

  Moody is a tiny wisp of a man with skin so pale it’s practically white. His hair fell out decades ago and his face is frozen in a permanent scowl. For no good reason he sits in a wheelchair next to the bed. He’s dressed in a dark suit that hangs limply on hi
s skeleton frame.

  No one pays any attention to the empty corpse in the bed that used to be home to Moody’s soul.

  “I’ll tell you what it means to me,” Moody continues, glowering at the reapers. He somehow manages to give the impression that he’s towering over them from his wheelchair. “It means that you show up here at nine-fifteen.” Spittle flies out of his mouth as he talks. “Either of you know how to tell time? Do you even bother to carry a damn watch?” It’s a rhetorical question. Moody barrels on through, picking up steam as he climbs onto his grumpy old man soapbox. “And not only are you late, you brought a damn woman. A woman. If you think I’m gonna let myself be shuffled off to the afterlife by something that bleeds once a month and doesn’t even have the decency to be wounded when it bleeds, you have got another thing coming.” He launches into a prolonged rant about how women belong in the kitchens and bedrooms of America. Fortunately, he’s dead, so nobody important is going to hear him.

  “Wow,” Avery whispers. She looks at Thane who’s trying to keep a straight face. “Is he for real?”

  “He is definitely for real.”

  “Do you know this was going happen?” she asks.

  “Did I know what was going to happen?” he whispers back.

  Avery frowns. “Don’t be coy.”

  “I don’t even know the meaning of the word,” Thane replies. “You saw the envelope. It was sealed. I wasn’t even allowed to open it before nine. All I had was a location and a time.”

  Avery gives him a suspicious look. “I don’t believe you.”

  He shrugs. “Sorry.” He coughs to cover a laugh.

  “This isn’t funny,” she says.

  “It’s a little funny.”

  Avery nods at the envelope. “What does it say he used to do?”

  Thane skims Moody’s profile. “He ran a moving company.”

  “A moving company?”

  “That’s what it says.”

  “Unbelievable,” Avery mutters.

  “Excuse me,” Moody snaps at them loudly. Thane and Avery turn back to the dead man. “Am I interrupting something?”

  Avery smiles as sweetly as she can. “Of course not, Mr. Moody. We’re here to help you.”

  Moody gives a classic, “harrumph” and says, “If that was the case, lady, you would have been here before I died.” He rolls forward to get a better look at her lips. “Dying with you giving me a blowjob would have been just about perfect.”

  Avery clenches her jaw, using all of her will not say anything. She looks back at Thane.

  “Already double checked,” Thane says, smirking as he holds up the envelope. “Doesn’t say anything about him being a grumpy, old, perverted asshole.”

  “You know, this reflects poorly on you,” she says to him.

  “Excuse me?” Moody growls at them. “What did you just call me?”

  Avery turns back to Moody and leans in. “He called you a grumpy, old, perverted asshole. Do you need me to say it louder?”

  Moody glares at her. “Woman,” he starts.

  Avery cuts him off by grabbing the handles on the wheelchair and spinning him around towards the door.

  “Hey!” Moody snaps. “This isn’t what I’m paying for!”

  Avery looks at Thane. “Are there cuffs in there?”

  “No.”

  “What the hell do you need handcuffs for?” Moody growls. He’s trying to spin the wheel chair back around, but Avery’s holding him in place. “I made the damn appointment. I should have been told if I was going to get a woman reaper!”

  “Oh, my goodness,” Avery mouths to Thane. She leans over and looks at Moody, “Just out of idle curiosity were you this much of a disgusting asshole when you were alive or has death really done a number on you?”

  “My last wife was pretty mouthy, too,” Moody replies. “You know what I did to her? I divorced her and shipped her off to Russia without so much as a dime in her pocket.”

  Avery grips the handles on the wheelchair a little too tightly. “How exactly did a charmer like you, live as long as you did?”

  Moody glares at her. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means,” Avery says, ignoring the snickering going on behind her. “How did you go ninety-five years being misogynistic asshole and not get killed?”

  Moody’s face breaks into the dirtiest old man grin Avery’s ever seen. “Little lady, I had the biggest cock in town. I could say and do whatever I wanted.”

  Avery lets go of the wheelchair. “Okay, I’m going to be sick now.”

  It’s Avery’s second visit to the Waiting Room that day and the best way to give yourself jet lag without flying anywhere is to visit the Waiting Room twice in one day.

  Thane and Avery are sitting next to each other across from the receptionist’s window. Moody is shoved in the corner next to the fake plant. Avery locked the wheels so he couldn’t move. It had been a twenty-minute ride from the clinic to the Waiting Room. Twenty minutes of John Moody doing his grumpy, dirty old man routine. Avery feels so disgusted she’s pretty sure she’s going to run through all of their hot water tonight. She wishes there was a way to scrub Moody’s words out of her brain.

  “I can’t believe my night went from a romantic dinner and a movie with my boyfriend, to escorting Hugh Hefner’s evil twin to the afterlife,” Avery says, leaning her head back against the wall.

  “Well, it could have been worse,” Thane says.

  “How could it have been worse?”

  “I could have left you alone at Clark’s.”

  Avery looks at him. Those blue eyes aren’t laughing at her.

  “I’m sorry?” She sits up. The thought strikes her like a bolt of lightning. “Was this a date?”

  “What?” Thane’s cool is immediately broken. “What? No. No. Why would you-”

  “I have a boyfriend,” Avery says.

  “As you’ve said plenty of times before.”

  “I’m not kidding,” Avery tells him.

  “I didn’t think you were.”

  “I am in a committed relationship with Jack.”

  “Avery,” Thane assures her. “This wasn’t a date.”

  “Thane, I am not kidding around here,” she warns him, leaning over towards him in her chair.

  He holds up his hands, trying to keep the situation from heading in the direction it was headed in. “No, look-”

  Avery doesn’t stop. She’s waving her finger at him. “I love Jack, Thane. Do you get that? He’s not a Shirley Martinez. He isn’t some flash-in-the-pan relationship.”

  “Okay, maybe we could leave Shirley Martinez out of this,” Thane suggests.

  “I am not going to cheat on Jack,” Avery tells him firmly. “I will never cheat on him.”

  “I am not asking you to cheat on anyone,” Thane says quickly. “This was not a date.”

  “You just happened to show up tonight?” Avery asks. “Going on about this love language crap? You didn’t need my help with this creep.” She points to Moody. “Hell, it would have been better if you hadn’t brought me along.”

  “Avery-” he starts again.

  “Thane, you have got to stop this,” Avery cuts him off. “I am with Jack.”

  “Avery, I swear on my mother’s grave,” Thane says, locking eyes with her. “This was not a date.” His voice is firm and commanding, it pulls her back from the of edge insanity.

  Avery exhales slowly. Her gaze is locked with his, those blue eyes pulling her in, inch by inch. She realizes how close she is to him. Their lips are nearly touching.

  There’s electricity in the air between them.

  His presence pulls her in deeper to the other edge.

  Thane leans forward.

  Their lips nearly brush together.

  Then Avery blinks.

  She pulls back.

  “Wait a minute,” Avery says breathlessly. “Your mother isn’t dead.”

  Thane tilts his head to the side. “Fair enough,” he conced
es. He opens his mouth, but he’s not sure what else to say.

  Avery squeezes her eyes closed, shaking her head. She can’t look at him, not right now.

  She gets to her feet. “No, this was a bad idea.”

  Thane gets up after her. “Avery-”

  “No,” she cuts him off. “Look, just, I don’t know. Keep the money. I shouldn’t be here.”

  Avery leaves before Thane can say anything else.

  Moody cackles enthusiastically from his corner.

  twelve

  It's first thing in the morning and against her better judgment, Brooke answers the phone.

  It has been ringing incessantly for the better part of twenty minutes. Brooke successfully ignored it for fifteen of those twenty minutes. The last five minutes, though, were really starting to break her concentration.

  "Uh, ah, hello?" Brooke answers. There’s a twitch in her voice.

  "Hey." It's Avery.

  "Hey," Brooke replies breathlessly.

  "Do you know what time it is?" she asks.

  "Not really," Brooke replies, straining her voice to sounds as normal as possible.

  "Of course you don't," Avery mutters. "We're supposed to meet Jackson this morning, remember?"

  "Well, ahhh," Brooke pauses as a tiny wave rolls through her body, tensing her muscles. "It's, ahh, still morning, right?" Brooke sucks in a sharp breath.

  There's a pause on the other end of the phone, then Avery asks, "Are you okay?"

  "I'm, ahh," Brooke breaks out into a soft moan. "I'm fine." She takes a deep breath and hopes her voice sounds a little sturdier. "Fine." She only trusts herself to say the one word.

  Avery pauses again, listening as carefully as she can. "Are you in the middle of something?"

  Brooke glances down at the shaved head nestled between her naked thighs. "You could, uh, ah, say that." Her body's rocked with another tiny wave and Brooke gets a little closer to the crescendo she's searching for.

  The sheets on the bed are a soft silk and a dark maroon color. The air-conditioning kicks on suddenly and the cool breeze drifts across her naked breasts, sharping her nipples into stiff little nubs.

  Stanley slides his hand up her naked body his coarse hands feeling delectably rough against her smooth skin. He flicks his fingers across her nipples and she shudders with delight.