Page 6 of Now to Forever

“Makin’ sure they see me in heaven, honey,” she says with a bright white smile and bloodred lips as she maneuvers Archie to line up with the opening of the retort door. Her chunky wedged boots clomp against the concrete floor as she smacks a piece of gum. “Plus”—she blows out a frustrated breath—“you know that apartment I’ve been renting above my sister’s garage?”

I nod, glancing at her before turning my attention to the stereo system, finding a Lynyrd Skynyrd playlist—Archie’s favorite band—and playing it low.

“Well, my nephew is coming home and wants it—you know moms, always wanting to help their kids.” She gives an annoyedhuff; the sentiment is lost on me. My mother has never oncewanted to help. “So now I have to find somewhere else to go.”

She gives me a wide-eyed look which is enhanced by the three gallons of mascara she must wear.

“And, you know, Wanda the Wicked ain’t a name people forget in a few years. I can’t find a pot to piss in around here.”

“That’s too bad,” I say, recalling the headlines in the small newspaper when she was arrested a few years ago.

She shrugs, smiling slightly as she takes the clipboard from the hook and flips through the paperwork to fill in her required lines.

“I’ll figure it out, just a pain in the tush.”

Then, like she didn’t just say she’s getting kicked out of her house with nowhere to go, she hums along with Lynyrd Skynyrd while I look Archie over. Wanda, despite the insane colors and makeup she wears into work every day, is a master at making the deceased look naturally alive. Like at any moment they could pop their eyes open and start talking.

Archie looks exactly as he did the last time he came in to see who was next for the fire. Black button-down shirt, blue jeans, and a living warmth to the skin of his round face and bald head.

“You miss this part?” she asks as she glances at me before returning the clipboard to the hook.

I shake my head. “When I had your job, they never looked so alive. More dead than they really were.”

She grins and blows a small bubble with her gum but doesn’t say anything else as she moves dials. The pep in her step as she works is emphasized by the jiggle of her chest.

I hired her two years ago, and despite her unorthodox style that leans more toward forty-seven-year-old stripper than cremation technician, I’ve yet to regret it. On the contrary, it’s been one of the best decisions of my life. Before, I did it all. I picked the bodies up from the morgue, bathed and dressed them, sat with the families, and worked the cremation process all in the name of saving money and doing it the same way the owner I bought it from did before me. Then, one day I was standing in line at the Walmart and there was Wanda, eyeing my basket and telling me the eyeliner I had picked out wouldn’t suit my hazel eyes. When I tried to tell her to go fix someone else’s face, I couldn’t get a word in edgewise; she refused to shut the hell up and in turn talked me right out of arguing with her and into buying a different color. Once she got over the eyeliner lecture, she noticed my Madonna shirt and jumped right into every iconic look she ever had.“Weren’t those cones one for the record books?”There was a sort of whimsy to her voice as she made twin conic gestures at her own chest.

She just kept talking, and for whatever reason, I kept listening. It turned out she was a beautician out of work who needed a job, and I was a funeral director who needed a break.

“Why’d you lose your job?”I asked her as we stood by my Bronco and loaded my bags into the back.

“I got arrested—charges dropped—for attempted murder on my ex-husband,”she said with a shrug, slipping a piece of gum into her mouth as she squinted thick mascaraed lashes up toward the sun.

Then I recognized her from the paper: Wanda the Wicked.

“You do it?”I asked, eyeing her outfit and trying to determine if she could murder someone. She was wearing skintight purple pants, a crocheted black shirt over a bright pink bra, and had more makeup on her face and hairspray in her hair than I’d used in my life. I had no way of knowing how old she was by looking at her—she could’ve been eighteen or eighty.

“Don’t matter much in a town like this now does it, honey?”she asked with a wry smile. I knew what she meant—I lived in the same small town where my reputation was decided by the trailer park I grew up in and the family whose shit was the opposite of together.

Before I knew what was happening, Wanda reached over to me and maneuvered my hair around my head.“You should wear your part to the side. Makes you look less tired.”

I hired her on the spot and never asked about her ex-husband again.

“Is Dondi coming in today?” I ask, smoothing my “Free Bird” shirt under my blazer.

Dondi is the body removal attendant and brings bodies to either the crematorium or the town funeral home, Tranquil Departures, in a refrigerated van he’s dubbed the Ice Pop.

“He said no deliveries scheduled for today when I saw him last night.”

My eyebrows pinch. “You saw him last night?”

She pats the bottom of her coif, chomping her gum. “Yesterday, last night. Same difference.”

Something flitters across her face as the front door opens and Archie’s wife appears on the other side of the window in the witnessing room.

I look down at Archie and a pang of sorrow burns in my chest. “Time to get lit on fire, old friend.”

Mrs. Watkins dabs her eyes from our spot in the witnessing room as we watch Wanda through the window, sliding Archie into the retort. The stainless-steel door closes and the process of Archie turning from the man we loved to ashes begins. The sound of the retort hums like a high-powered fan, but in our position on the opposite side of the glass, it’s so quiet and unobtrusive it’s as if it’s not even happening at all. Like the life that was once intertwined with so many others isn’t even in there turning to dust.

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