Page 5 of Now to Forever

“Fine.” She closes her eyes, as if trying to keep herself from snapping. “You know what I mean. Just—” She looks at the church. “Are you dating?”

Why is she pushing this?

A car drives through the lot around us, loud music vibrating the windows with a rattle. “I like being alone.”

Her look says she doesn’t believe me. “There’s a new teacher at the school. He’s a coach—Camp said he’s single. Has two kids—” I frown. “And he’s nice. And cute.”

“He’s cute?”

She nods too many times. “Like, so cute,Scotty.”

I squint at her.

“Seriously.Socute.” Her tone is eager.Tooeager. “Hot, really. And-and-and funny. Think about it. And promise me you’ll tell me if something is going on. Let me help?”

I soften toward her, my best friend that’s been by my side through every dark age on the timeline of my life. “Fine.” I squeeze her arm through the down window. “But my apartment is cheery as unicorn shit.”

She snorts and the boys scream.

The engine of the minivan hums when she turns the key, and her eyes search me like she’s looking for a gunshot wound before shifting the gear. “You’re a pain.”

I grin. “I know I’m not.”

As she drives away, I know in a million years she’ll never understand what it’s like to be me. She ended up with the family, the house, the photography career that sets her on fire. Once upon a time, I thought that would be me: a woman who would smile easy surrounded by people who loved her. But it didn’t work out that way and I’ve made peace with it. When you live a life filled with ghosts and defined by loss, alone is easier. People alone don’t come home from a hike only to find out everyone they love is gone, forced to spend the rest of their lives with a hole in their chest. They don’t go to college thinking one day they might become a lawyer only to drop out and spend their days cremating bodies.

June and Mel don’t get it. They can’t. Nobody can.

When I start down the road, it’s the same out-of-the-way drive I’ve been making every Sunday for nearly twenty years: past therun-down trailer park on the edge of town, over the river by the wooden cross nearly smothered by the tree line, and to a two-story house in a cookie-cutter neighborhood where a family of three washes a car, pickup truck, and SUV in the driveway.

The mom sees me, pausing mid-scrub with a sponge to wave when I slow down. I smile slightly, only giving myself a few seconds of watching—the husband and son oblivious of my presence.

When I get home, I start a record by The Black Crowes, pour whiskey in a rocks glass, and turn on all the lights. Dark shadows from the lampshade reach across the ceiling as lyrics about talking to angels play like an anthem. When the last sip burns my belly, I convince myself my apartment is as bright as the damn sun.

Two

“Wanda?”Icallfrommy office. “Today’s send-off is for Archie Watkins. He ready?”

“Of course he is, honey,” she answers, her thick southern twang bouncing down the hall. “Wheeling him up now.”

I double-check his paperwork as I walk from my office to the cremation room—all accounted for. Archie was eighty-two and died from complications following heart surgery.

Though I mostly keep to myself aside from a few random dates when the spirit moves me, Ledger’s small size means most names are familiar to me. Archie, however, had become enough of a presence in my life for sadness to wash over me at the thought of him being gone. His brother owns the gas station across the street from Happy Endings, and, for a reason I never quite understood, this translated to him becoming a regular visitor. I got the job; he showed up the next day.

And the next.

And the next.

He’d go to the gas station every morning, meet his brother and a group of retired men for a cup of coffee, then shuffle across the street and ask,“Now, Scotty, who we lightin’ on fire today?”At first, his visits annoyed me—part of the appeal of working with the dead is not having to be social—but annoyance grew into something else. Something comfortable. After twenty years, enjoyable.

After I’d tell him who was on the docket, he’d give me a piece of gossip about the deceased. Usually affairs, though there were a couple murderers, one cross-dresser, and a bank robber who all had their secrets spilled while we stood over them in their cardboard cremation containers as their favorite music played through the speakers.

Archie also never tired of taking a tour of the old brick building. Happy Endings isn’t big; there’s one big room with the retort—what most people know as a cremator—with exposed brick walls, concrete floors, a stainless-steel worktable, and one large window that looks into the witnessing room. More like a living room than anything, the witnessing room is painted a deep shade of green with eclectic furniture, a coffee station on an antique table, and a shelf of urns and mugs made by a local potter from a couple towns over. The home-like atmosphere is why many people opt to watch family members go into the retort from there. More than once, Archie commented,“Never thought it’d be so comfortable to watch someone you love burn up.”But it was the back room that fascinated him the most—the place he dubbed Wanda’s Workshop. This is where nearly everything happens: a garage doorfor body intake, a large cooler for body storage, all the tools needed for body preparation, and tables and equipment for processing the remains post-cremation.

Archie would watch Wanda at the table, his old lips in a tight line as she dragged a magnet through the pan of cremains, turning almost giddy when she’d pick up a medical pin that didn’t get incinerated.“Never knew he had a bad hip,”he’d mumble as he watched her work.

At the same time I hang the clipboard of paperwork on the hook next to the dials and buttons of the retort, Wanda wheels in Archie in his cardboard casket. As always, my eyes are drawn to her first. Ridiculous coif of blonde hair, line of cleavage a mile long, and clothes so tight and bright they should require a warning sign and special eyewear.

“You’re conspicuous as ever,” I say, regarding her blue spandex dress over neon-green fishnet stockings.

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