by Dan Wells
“Awesome,” said Jasmyn, snarling at the fridge and grabbing a face mask of her own. “Bring it.”
“Here,” I said, and held up a bottle of perfume I’d found on the shelf by the embalming fluids—a lot of morticians kept a good fragrance in the back room to help with the occasional corpse-y smell. I sprayed it in the air between us, waved my face mask through it, and then strapped it over my mouth and nose. She did the same. “Ready?”
“I’d say I was born for this,” she said, “but that would be super depressing.”
Margo’s old refrigerator had spent several months in storage, ever since she’d upgraded to the new one Assu had destroyed. We’d wheeled it into the embalming room and plugged it in, hoping the cold would help deal with the smell by the time we were done washing all the dust off the outside. Now the outside was sparkling like a dream sequence, and we couldn’t stall any longer. I opened the first door, and let the stench wash over us.
It wasn’t filthy, just old. The unit had four chambers, two up and two down, so Jasmyn and I took opposite corners and started washing, doing our best to stay out of each other’s way. We had a bucket full of hot, soapy water—only one bucket, because the other one was mysteriously missing—and a bottle full of industrial disinfectant. We also had rags, but we were dealing with long, narrow, body-shaped tunnels, so the only way to reach the back was with mops. I took the lower left chamber and tried not to grumble every time Jasmyn’s mop dripped soapy corpse water on my head from her spot in the upper right.
I waited for her to make conversation, but she didn’t. I needed to become her friend so I could find a new place to stay, and that meant conversation. Looked like I had to start it myself. I braced myself mentally and dove in.
“So I’ve been in Lewisville three days now,” I said. “It’s kind of…” I didn’t know how to finish that sentence without sounding fake or insulting.
“Boring?” she offered.
“You said it,” I told her, “not me.”
“It’s kind of fun if you like hiking. We have lots of great trails and stuff out in the canyons.”
I scraped the mop back and forth across the back of the chamber. “You go hiking a lot?”
“No, I hate it,” she said. “But I mean, I hear we have good trails. If you’re into that.”
“Lewisville must be worse than I thought,” I said. “Your go-to defense of your town is a thing you don’t even like to do? This place must be terrible.”
She groaned. “You have no idea. It’s not really that bad, though. But I don’t know why I’m defending it because it’s not really my town, anyway. I’ve only been here a year.”
“Where’d you move from?” I asked. “Down by the border?”
“Border?” She stopped scrubbing and looked at me. “You think I’m Mexican.”
I frowned. “You’re not?”
“Not even close,” she said, and pumped her fist in the air. “Yes! Another racist detected by the awesome superpowers of Jasmyn Shahi.”
“We’re in Arizona,” I said. “Is it racist to assume the Latina girl is Mexican?”
“I’m not even Latina,” she said, and made a loud explosion noise with her mouth. “He is powerless before my might.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “My hometown is kind of overwhelmingly white, so I don’t have a lot experience identifying the other options. Can I ask where you’re from, then?”
“Ohio.”
“I mean ethnically.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m just being difficult at this point.”
“I bet you get the Mexican thing all the time, right?”
“You have no idea,” she said, gritting her teeth as she scrubbed with her mop. “But honestly, I don’t really mind. As patriotic as some of these people are, I’d probably get a lot more crap from them if they knew what I really was.”
“Which is?”
“Persian,” she said. “First generation Iranian-American. But this way I have a whole Latino support system instead of being the one lone Persian girl.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” I wrung out my mop in the bucket, then started scrubbing again. “So why’d you move from Ohio?”
“Because I thought I liked hiking,” she said. “And I thought I liked accounting, and Lewis College has a good accounting program, so why not move down here and kill two birds with one stone? But then it turned out I hated both things, so all I had was two dead birds and nowhere to go. So I came here to the mortuary and got a job with Margo.”
“Drawn in by the siren song of dead-body smell,” I said.
“It’s my favorite.”
“Seriously, though, what did bring you here?” I asked. “I was born into mortuary life, and Harold too, and Margo married into it. You’re the only one who’s here by choice.”
“Hand me the disinfectant,” she said. I handed it up, and she sprayed a few more blasts into the refrigeration chamber. “I don’t know if I’m here by choice,” she said. “I mean, I chose it, but it’s not like I had a lot of other choices clamoring for my attention. Margo came to me, and I didn’t have anything else to do, so I did this.”
I set down my mop and started scrubbing at the mouth of the chamber with my rag. “Margo just … came to you? Out of nowhere?”
“We met at a funeral,” said Jasmyn.
“Makes sense.” I gave the chamber a final wipe and started working on the door. We worked in silence for a moment, while I desperately tried to think of something to say. And then Jasmyn said it first:
“You’re not asking me the obvious question.”
I stopped, trying to think of what I’d missed. “Whose funeral?”
“Okay,” she said, “I mean the other obvious question.”
“You’re not going to tell me who died?”
“Some kid from school.” She used her rag to pick out grime from around the edge of her door’s rubber seal. “What you’re not asking me is why I didn’t go home.”
She was right. She’d come from Ohio for college, and when that didn’t work out she could have gone back. Her family was there. I stared at the fridge a long time before answering. “That kind of thing doesn’t really occur to me,” I said. “I can’t exactly go home either.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So why didn’t you go home?”
“I don’t like talking about it.”
I laughed. “Then why did you bring it up?”
“Because everyone brings it up,” she said. “I was just trying to get ahead of it, so you’d know not to ask.”
“That didn’t work very well.”
“Do you want to get dinner tonight?” she asked suddenly. Her voice sped up. “There’s actually like a group of us getting together at this place that does Mexican pizza, it’s like a whole thing here in Lewisville—they put maraschino cherries on the Hawaiian ones for some reason—and it’s kind of an informal thing, but I thought since you don’t know anybody it’d be nice to get to … know some more people. If you’re interested.”
I do this all the time: I take something totally normal, like getting to know someone, and turn it into a meticulous plan, like I’m going to rob a casino. I don’t need to manipulate people, because people aren’t like me. I just need to ask, and they’ll say yes, because friendship is a normal thing that normal people do every day.
“That sounds good,” I said. “Assuming that Mexican pizza includes vegetarian options—I’m one of those people.”
“I think they have a nopal one.”
“What’s nopal?”
“Cactus.”
“Perfect,” I said. “My doctor keeps telling me I need more cactus.”
“It’s actually pretty good,” said Jasmyn. “Though again, like with hiking, I’m mostly just repeating what I’ve heard other people say.”
“Cool,” I said. “What time?”
“Um … dinnertime? I don’t know. I’ll tell you once I get a chance to check my phone. Now I have another qu
estion.”
I took a breath, not knowing what to expect.
“Are you ready to switch?” asked Jasmyn. “I think this cadaver tube’s about as clean as I’m going to get it.”
* * *
The restaurant was called Nacho Parrot, which more or less told you everything you needed to know about it. The customers were mostly early twentysomethings from the junior college, the menu was “edgy,” in that it contained a lot of comic-book fonts, and the food was almost hilariously proud of how hip it was. I stepped up to the register and ordered the Rico Suave, which was mostly cactus and goat cheese and Hatch green chilies, and then paid with Assu’s money. Jasmyn introduced me to her friends while we waited at our booth.
“This is Nate,” she said first, pointing to a lanky, vaguely bearded man in a shapeless hat. “He’s majoring in … visual art? Visual design?”
“Visual communication,” said Nate. “It’s basically illustration.”
“I didn’t realize Lewis College had an illustration program,” I said.
“They don’t,” said Nate. “It’s called visual communication. It’s like half illustration and half marketing.”
“Cool.” I didn’t know anything about any of those subjects, and I worried that I’d offended him by my attempt at small talk, so I determined to keep quieter until I knew the group dynamic a little better.
“This is Al!sha,” said Jasmyn. “She’s in theater, so she spells it with an exclamation mark instead of an ‘i.’”
“And it’s so annoying,” said Nate.
“No theater anymore,” said Al!sha, “I’m back in technical writing again. So if you need someone bitter and underpaid to describe a simple process in agonizing detail, I’m your woman.”
“You hated technical writing,” said Jasmyn. “Why’d you go back?”
“Because my dad won’t pay for anything else,” said Al!sha.
“Hey guys,” said another boy. He walked to the table holding hands with a girl. Both were wearing glasses with thick black frames. “I brought my girlfriend, I hope that’s cool.”
“Jazz brought her boyfriend,” said Nate.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” said Jasmyn. “We just work together, and he’s new in town.”
“Hey,” said the boy, and reached out his hand to shake mine. “I’m Parker.”
Nate grinned. “Which is both his name and his job.”
“Shut up,” said Parker, smacking him and pushing him further into the booth. He kept pushing him until there was room for both himself and his girlfriend. “Everyone, this is Shelby. Shelby, this is everyone: Nate, Jazz, Al!sha with an exclamation point, and new guy.”
“Robert,” said Jasmyn.
“He can introduce himself,” said Nate.
“What,” said Jasmyn, “and Shelby can’t? You don’t complain when a woman doesn’t get to speak for herself, but heaven forbid a man sits there and lets a girl take the lead.”
“Girlfriend,” said Al!sha.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I said. “I’ve known her for two days.”
“Though we did clean out a corpse fridge together today,” said Jasmyn, “so we’re pretty close.”
“So how do we order?” asked Shelby. “Is this, like, a slice-by-slice place, or do we all pitch in for a whole pizza?”
“Slice by slice,” said Parker. “The menu’s on the wall over there; pick something you like, and I’ll go place the order.”
“Adobada’s the best,” said Jasmyn.
“I’ve never had Mexican pizza,” said Shelby, “so I’d probably better start with something I recognize. Do they have, like, a taco pizza?”
“Technically, any pizza you fold in half is a taco pizza,” said Jasmyn.
“Taco isn’t a food,” said Nate, “it’s a food category, defined by a delivery system. That’s like asking for a sandwich pizza without specifying the sandwich type—is it a club? A Reuben? A hamburger?”
“A hamburger is not a sandwich,” said Al!sha, “it’s a burger.”
“Ignore them,” said Parker to Shelby. “I don’t even know why I spend time with them. They’re terrible people.”
“A hamburger is totally a sandwich,” said Nate.
“A hamburger is not on par with ‘club’ and ‘Reuben’ as sandwich types,” said Al!sha. “It’s a category, just like sandwich—but it’s not a sandwich.”
Jasmyn smiled at me. “Aren’t you glad you came?”
“It’s two pieces of bread and something in between them,” said Nate. “Any rational human being would classify it as a—”
“What about a Big Mac?” asked Jasmyn. “They have three pieces of bread.” She held up her hand to Al!sha, who high-fived it without even looking.
“Wait,” said Parker. “That definition of sandwich would include not just hamburgers but hot dogs, which is patently ridiculous.”
“A hot dog is totally a sandwich,” said Nate.
“If anything,” said Jasmyn, “a hot dog is a taco, because the two pieces of bun are connected.” She drew a giant circle in the air. “And now we’re back to the beginning, and I just blew your minds.”
I looked at Shelby. “I hope that helped answer your question about the menu.”
“Close enough,” Shelby said, and pointed at Nate. “I want the first thing he said—a Reuben pizza.”
Everyone stared at her.
“No,” said Parker, “this is all just Mexican food.”
Shelby smirked. “Then why did he say there was a Reuben pizza?”
“Just ignore him,” said Parker, “he’s an idiot.”
“Order the carne asada,” said Al!sha. “It’s the best.”
“Adobada’s the best,” said Jasmyn. “Trust me.”
“Carne asada’s fine,” Shelby said, and looked at Jasmyn. “I’m sure your one is delicious, though.”
“I’ll give you a bite,” said Jasmyn. “You’ll see.”
“So what’s the news?” asked Parker. “Anything big?”
I accidentally helped an ancient sun god immolate himself in a refrigerator, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud.
“Al!sha-with-an-exclamation-point switched back to technical writing,” said Nate. “Again.”
“Again?” asked Parker. “I thought you were theater for sure this time.”
“My dad won’t pay for theater,” said Al!sha. “And honestly I don’t even care—I’m better off. Have you ever ridden in a car with a group of theater people? It doesn’t matter what song comes on, everyone sings along with the harmony line. No melody.”
“I have to assume, though,” said Nate, “that you get a lot less nudity in tech writing.”
“We know,” said Parker, “we know: you’re in illustration, and you work with live nude models. Give it a rest.”
“It’s called visual communication,” said Nate.
“None of my theater work was nude,” said Al!sha. “That sex scene was entirely behind a screen—you guys would know that if you’d ever come to see it.”
“Wait,” said Shelby, “I think I saw that. Was it last fall, in the Twitchell Theater?”
“That’s the one!” said Al!sha. “That’s amazing, I thought nobody saw that one!”
“My boyfriend at the time was in it—Scott Kraczek?”
“He’s the one I had fake sex with!” Al!sha said, and then crinkled her nose. “He was such an a-hole, though.”
“He was,” said Shelby. “Total a-hole.”
“You can just say the real word,” said Nate. “We’re not going to melt in its presence.”
“Excuse me for a minute,” said Jasmyn, standing up, “I need to go outside for some air. Let me know when the pizza gets here.” She walked to the door.
“So maybe Jazz would melt in its presence,” said Nate, “but the rest of us are fine.”
“Is she okay?” asked Shelby. “She looked really bothered by something.”
“She just does this sometimes,” said Parke
r. “She’ll be back. And we still need to order—you want carne asada?”
“Yes, please,” said Shelby.
“Be right back.” They shared a quick kiss. “Finish talking about the ex-boyfriend before I get back, okay? I’m amazing, but not amazing enough to want to listen to that.” He went to stand in line at the counter, and Shelby and Al!sha turned back to each other, gossiping about the ex. Nate turned to me.
“So,” he said. “I think you’ve said six entire words since you got here. What’s your deal?”
“I’m quiet,” I said.
“I don’t mean why aren’t you talking,” he said. “Obviously you’re quiet, that’s a given. But who are you, where are you from, why do you work with dead bodies? All that kind of stuff.”
“My name’s Robert,” I said. I didn’t want to sleep on Nate’s couch if I could avoid it, but if this is what it took to hide from the FBI, I could make peace with anyone. Or at least I could try. “I’m from a little town you’ve probably never heard of called Fetridge, Nebraska.” I’d seen it on a sign once. “I work with dead bodies because my parents were morticians, and I just kind of grew up with it.”
“That’s gross,” said Nate.
“Only if you treat it grossly,” I said.
“It’s also very matter-of-fact,” said Nate. “‘Here’s what I do, here’s where I’m from: X, Y, Z, all in a row.’ What do you like? What do you do? Who are you?”
I really didn’t like this guy. “Those are deep questions.”
“I’m an artist,” he said. “This is how we are.”
I managed to stop myself from rolling my eyes. “An artist and a marketer,” I said. “How can I resist the double threat?”
“By giving in and answering.”
I shrugged. I wasn’t really prepared to talk about myself, especially considering that the only self I could talk about was a fake alias I would be making up on the spot. “Well,” I said. “I like…” There were only a handful of people I knew well enough to describe on the spot, and only one of them was a mortician. So I described my mom. “I like eighties music. And cooking—like, not just ‘making dinner’ kind of cooking, but ‘experimenting with fancy recipes’ kind of cooking. The kind that’s almost like chemistry. And I don’t watch a lot of TV, but when I do it’s lawyer shows or the news. And I like…” I could feel my memories shifting as I spoke, buried ideas churning up to the surface as I struggled to define her in some kind of understandable way. “My job. My family, back when I had one. And I never really … had time for them, all the time? Not because I ignored them but because I had a lot to do, and I had to juggle it all, and I had to make it work. And I don’t know if they understood that at the time, but they do now. I mean, I think they do—I hope they do.”