“Bossman, y’hear what I—？”
“One more sec,” Zig said, adding some final blush to Mrs. Paoli’s cheeks.
As always, the hardest part was getting the coloring just right. People think corpses are gray, but by the time they arrive at a funeral home, they’re white. “Like geishas,” Zig’s mentor used to say. Once your heart stops and your body is on its back for a few hours, gravity sets in, blanching your face, chest, and legs—that is, unless an artful mortician gives you back your color.
“I told you, ma’am, we’ll take care of you,” Zig whispered, moving a stray silver hair from her forehead and flashing that charming smile that had gotten every mah-jongg group gossiping back when he first moved to the small town of Wonderly Square. Zig’s silver-and-black hair was shorter now, for summer. Across his jaw was the hairline scar that he’d used to his advantage during those wild years after his divorce.
For most of his adult life, Zig had been a mortician at Dover Air Force Base, home of the mortuary for the U.S. government’s most high-profile and top secret cases. On 9/11, the victims of the Pentagon attack were sent to Dover. So were the hostages who were killed in Beirut, the victims who were shot at Fort Hood, and the remains of well over fifty thousand soldiers and CIA operatives who’d fought in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and every secret location in between. In Delaware, of all places, at Dover Air Force Base, was America’s most secretive funeral home.
Two years earlier, Zig had left it all behind. There was too much pain—too many old scars torn open from spending every day with dead young soldiers. Within a month, he’d found the job here at Calta’s Funeral Home, in a building that, back in the seventies, had been a Dairy Queen, complete with a red mansard roof that was now painted beige. Zig took it as a sign, hoping things could be a bit more nice and easy. But really, when was anything in life nice and easy?
“I’m looking for Jim Zigarowski,” a man in his late thirties called out, stepping into the viewing room, then taking a half step back once he spotted the coffin. He wore a shiny blue suit, no tie, like he was going to a beachfront wedding.
“You must be Mr. DeSanctis,” Zig said as the man took off his Mercedes baseball cap, which he’d clearly gotten from the dealership.
“Is he actually wearing a Mercedes hat?” Puerto Rican Andy whispered. “Ten points from Slytherin.”
“Is that—？ Is she—？” DeSanctis motioned to the coffin.
“Your mother is—”
“Mother-in-law. She’s— Mother-in-law,” DeSanctis insisted.
“My apologies,” Zig said, putting on his funeral home voice, which made him sound like an NPR host. “As you’ll see, we got her all cleaned up, so if you want to take a look—”
“Y’mean at the body? No. No no no.” DeSanctis laughed nervously. “We’d rather remember her how she lived, not how she died,” he explained, glancing around at the chairs, the flowers, even at the framed vintage metal sign from the funeral home’s original 1908 location. Offering Understanding, it read in antique lettering. He glanced around at everything, really, except Mrs. Paoli. “Anyway, if you wouldn’t mind . . . y’know . . . closing it . . . ?” he said, pointing with his fancy baseball cap toward the coffin.
“Of course,” Zig replied with a polite grin.
DeSanctis stood there an extra few seconds. “Gotta be a horrible way to go, right? Like I told my own kids, don’t ever put me in a nursing home. Last thing I want is to spend my final years collecting dust.”
Zig nodded, still faking a grin. But as he looked around the ancient funeral home, Zig was surprised by how much the words stung. Collecting dust. Was that all he was doing these days?
DeSanctis headed out to his family, as Zig felt a buzz in his pocket. His phone vibrating. To his surprise, caller ID showed a familiar number.