Page 57 of The Husband Diet
Of course I’m not OK!I wanted to scream.My best friend is dead and I’ll never talk to him again!
But instead, I squared my shoulders, took another deep breath and nodded. She nodded back and we approached The Drawers.
She lifted the sheet as I bit my lower lip to keep from screaming.
I screamed.
‘That’s not Paul!’
She stared at me, then at the old man on the slab. ‘Not who?’
‘Paul!’ I screamed. ‘Paul Belhomme, my friend!’
She quickly covered the body with a whispered, ‘Oh my God, aren’t you Mr. Smith’s daughter?’
‘No, I’m not! Where’s Paul?’ I screeched, my whole body shaking, unable to understand what was happening.
‘Just one moment – someone must have misplaced him,’ she said, her eyes darting everywhere.
‘You mean to tell me you’ve lost him?’
‘What’s his name again? Paul?’
‘Paul Belhomme! B-E-L-H-O-M-M-E!’
She gave me another quick apologetic look as she rifled through her files and then finally picked up the phone.
‘He must be in the new morgue. Just one moment, please,’ she pleaded, on the verge of tears herself.
I closed my eyes and began to bawl. ‘I don’t know anything about a new or old morgue. All they did was tell me to come—’
She raised a hand to shush me and I almost grabbed her by the lapels to give her a good shake. They’d lost Paul and now she wasshushingme?
She put the phone down. ‘They’re getting back to me in a few moments. I’m so, so sorry. Can I get you some coffee, Mrs. Belhomme?’
I slumped into a chair and let the tears roll. Even in death, he was being mistreated! Why couldn’t people respect him for what he was? He was gay. A wonderful, loving gay man who was my anchor. My lifeline. And my lifeline had died in a stupid, stupidcar accident.
I couldn’t catch my breath, wiping at my tears as they appeared, but they were too fast to keep up.
The phone buzzed and she pounced on it but missed her mark as she tripped over the cord and fell under her desk.
‘Oi oi…’ she moaned.
I leaned over the desk and peered down into her face. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yeah,’ she whispered, and I stepped over the killer cord to help the poor thing up.
Her nose was bleeding like bloody Niagara Falls.
‘Here, hang on to me,’ I said as I lifted her bodily (she was practically the size of Yoda inStar Wars) and gently placed her on a chair and pulled out some tissues from my bag. I twirled two tiny bits and gently wedged them on the inside of her nostrils like I always did with Warren’s nosebleeds. ‘There you go, how’s that?’
Yoda looked up at me in total misery, her eyes as red as her face. ‘Blease doh’d tell addybuddy. Idz by first day here ad I really deed dis job.’
‘I won’t,’ I promised. This day couldn’t have got any worse.
The phone on her desk rang and we turned to stare at it, or rather, cower from it. Paul. Where the hell had they put him?
‘Shall I answer it for you?’ I offered, seeing as she sounded like she was talking from the bottom of the ocean.
