Bad Girls Burn Slow, page 2
Lately, people had been protesting Rosedale Cemetery. They didn’t like the noise and the dust, and there was no mistaking the sickening odor. It was like rancid cologne mixed with pungent rotting leather. The neighborhood smelled like the bottom of a worn thrift shop purse.
Margie ignored the protester and tightened the grip on Paula’s hand.
“The dental work from burning puts mercury in the air. The EPA should shut this place down.”
Margie ignored the woman and kept chomping her gum. She glanced at the obituary announcement once more and then tossed the newsprint down on the ground. Alice Fowler. Alice Fowler’s husband was in there. A nasty smile crept from Margie’s painted mouth. Marching up the cathedral steps and pulling Paula behind her, Margie took a deep breath and grabbed the brass-handled door.
The protester rushed her, rapidly following her up the steps. For an older woman, she moved as fast as a graveyard rodent. “The homeowners have complained. We have signatures now,” the woman explained. “Our property values dropped when that smokestack went up. Don’t give them any more business!” she warned.
Margie swung open the door against the protester’s shoulder. Paula had to duck to get out of the way. “So what?” Margie said, holding the door with one hip, popping her gum in the old woman’s face.
The first thing Margie noticed in the room was the cool fragrance. A heavy natural scent of hundreds of freshly cut carnations perfumed the dense air. “What a waste,” Margie said, scowling at the floral arrangements. She took her gum out and smashed it under the holy water dish. “People spend so much money on this junk, and it’s all going to die in a week.”
Paula ignored the flowers. She fiddled around. Almost bursting, she did a torturous I-have-to-pee dance. Scanning the room, searching for some kind of bathroom, she broke loose from her mother when she spotted a blue sign.
“Wait!” Margie whispered. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Paula was halfway in the men’s room when Margie snatched her arm.
“Mommy,” the girl anxiously held her own crotch. “I really have to go bad.”
She looked agonized and pranced back and forth on her feet. Her pleading eyes looked desperate and wet.
“Okay, but can’t you read? You’re in such a hurry to pee, you’re going inside the wrong one!” Margie pushed the girl into the women’s door across the hall. “And make sure you lift your dress and do it the way I showed you. And come right back out when you’re done.”
The girl nodded, broke loose from her mother’s firm grip, and went inside one of the stalls.
Margie turned her head and walked toward the front pews. She saw a bald man trying to loosen his tie. That must be the son, she thought.
Struggling with the knot at his throat, he finally opened it up and took a breath like it was the very last one of his life. He sneezed, rubbing both of his eyes with his fists as if the flowers had triggered an allergic reaction.
The chapel was sprinkled with a variety of withered, time worn souls, people that had already lived the summer and fall of their lives and were now in the middle of a hard winter storm. Margie saw an ancient-looking broad holding a casserole pan in both hands. Another dried up crow carried a pink dessert box, and a third clutched some wine in her age-spotted hands.
“Bitches!” Margie murmured, a little too loud, while slipping on a laced pair of gloves. She knew lots of women who worked the funeral circuit like her. Parading from one death to another, carrying casseroles on their hips. Dressed to the nines wearing broaches and pearls, hunting through widows trying to nab a new husband.
Margie took a close look at old Mr. Fowler to see if any woman trapped him yet. Two old women were huddled in the pew behind his chair. One rubbed his shoulder. The other held his hand.
“Go ’head ol’ bitties. Shoot your best shot,” she said to herself. Margie shifted her dress and popped out her bosom. She had studied the picture of Alice, Mr. Fowler’s dead wife. To look more like Alice, Margie had cut and colored her hair. She’d already snipped it once to avoid the cops in Nevada, but now it was dyed midnight black to make her look exactly like Alice.
“None of you heifers have a chance,” Margie laughed. She strutted down the aisle, jiggling her frame and then suddenly she stopped, dropping down on one knee, and making the sign of the cross, dabbing her head, chest and shoulders. Then she got up and boldly sat in the front pew reserved for family.
Margie was a natural beauty, with high cheekbones and pouted lips and a body to make Marilyn Monroe cry. At fifty-six, she looked sensational from way across the street, but up close and underneath her good friends Maybelline and Revlon, she was twenty miles of long, beat up road. Looking good was a hell of a lot harder to pull off. Being in California didn’t help matters either. This was definitely no Memphis. It wasn’t Shreveport or Dallas either. Shoot, in those states, plenty of men would have noticed her already. Three or four would have approached her and she’d be sportin’ a man’s arm by now, without giving up anything but a semi-cooked grin.
But this was L.A. This place was a lot different. L.A. was a bitch for scheming women like her. In fact, Los Angeles was another league altogether. There were beautiful chicks every single place you went. Margie would suck in her belly, but then just let it fall because it didn’t matter what she sucked in out here. There were fine women all over, in the banks or at the mall. Even the scags bagging her groceries were beauties. So Margie had to be more practical. She concentrated on much older cons. The sixty-year-olds wouldn’t even look in her face. The seventy-year-olds glanced but ran to women in their forties. Sadly, Margie was aiming at octogenarians now. She couldn’t believe she had to deal with these wrinkled old stiffs who had one foot in a rest home and the other hovering near the box. But these men felt lucky to have a foxy chick like her and loved squeezing her with their age-spotted arms. Margie wore extra makeup when working a con. Her face was so completely done, she was like a hazy Cézanne painting. She wore an eighteen-hour bra and a reinforced girdle, and though she struggled to breathe from all the armor under her dress, the old men sitting in the pews for the funeral thought she was a breath of fresh air. They stared at her and felt like they’d died and gone to heaven, and she smiled at them all, pretending to nod and wave even though she didn’t know a single soul there.
Blowing his nose and trying not to sneeze, Bernard hurried down the aisle toward the bathroom in back. Floral walls met up with solid wood molding, and large planters exploded with exotic fake plants.
Bernard saw the mortuary’s owner, Mr. Reynolds, talking to another family down the hall. Mr. Reynolds held the shoulder of a slack-jawed old man. The man was wearing a jacket with elbow patches, and his lids were so red he looked like he had a nasty bout of pinkeye.
Reynolds was a broad, commanding man, who was used to comforting others. He stood 6’ 7” and wore dark expensive suits and glossy black wingtip shoes. His shock of gray hair only made him appear more grand. People liked him. He had a great gift for gab. His name was the main reason they came to this parlor. Reynolds. People remembered the place. Generations had been coming to see Reynolds. He was like a friend of the family, a long distant cousin, a favorite uncle you saw from time to time. He was there when your favorite uncle fell down the stairs or when your sister swam alone at the beach and drowned or when your grandfather stopped breathing in his sleep. Reynolds had viewings or wakes and celebrations of life, where you sang to ornate caskets of silver or gold that gleamed like a brand-new waxed Rolls.
People said things like, “Reynolds sure made her look good,” and “Call Reynolds, honey, he’ll handle the whole thing for you.” They admired the beautiful living room elegance of his rooms, the chandeliers, the rich carpets, the burgundy drapes, and the espresso machine he kept in the corner or the warm cookies on the buffet. He worked hard to make the living feel relaxed with departure. He made death so damn pretty; people lingered in their seats, marveling at his grandiose altars. Reynolds was making a killing. People came to him in all kinds of imaginable contraptions. In cars or in limos, pickup trucks or wagons, in buses or bicycles and even on foot, but it was his white vans that delivered the bodies. The white vans were blank with no hint of signage at all, except for a singular “R” on the driver’s side door, done in a beautiful, hand-painted, calligrapher’s scroll. If it weren’t for that one single letter on the door, you’d never know Reynolds was there. But he was everywhere you looked, once you realized the score. He was at parks, schools, or hospital wards—wherever death came knocking at your door. He came unannounced and least expected. His van would just roll up and park at the curb, and wheel out a vinyl green gurney. Everybody eventually saw Reynolds. His parlor was over a century old. He never advertised or printed brochures or put signs on bus benches. He didn’t make sales calls or knock on anyone’s door. His funeral home was like an undergound, word of mouth kind of business. He didn’t need to find clients. His clients found him. There was always a steady supply of corpses.
But when the crematory became the profit-making arm of Reynolds’ business, the parlor started to get a bad name. People started complaining about the odor and soot. The chimney stacks emitted a thick ash that covered everyone’s cars. The ash eased through their windows or underneath doors, making dusting each day a necessary chore and the locals began to abhor it.
“People are larger,” Reynolds explained to some protesters once. “Those big ones, hell those suckers take forever to burn. Stinkers, they can burn for eight hours. Shoot, we used to do stiffs for under ninety-six minutes, but those good old days are long gone.”
And with the popularity of crematories on the rise, Reynolds couldn’t stop burning bodies.
“Hell, people can’t afford to lay folks out anymore,” he once told Bernard. “Caskets and plots and the rental of limos can run you way up in the thousands,” he would go on. “Now don’t get me wrong. I appreciate this business. My daddy would have keeled over if he knew what I charged today. Shoot, the average funeral costs you upwards of ten grand at least. But cremation is as easy as making popcorn on a stove. Next thing you know, it’s all done.”
Bernard liked working for Reynolds. He didn’t require him to talk. His boss seemed content with hearing his own voice. All Bernard did was sit back and listen.
Reynolds winked as Bernard passed him to go to the bathroom “I’m sorry, son,” he said, smacking Bernard on the back. “At least your poor mother doesn’t have to suffer no more.”
Ever since Bernard’s mother had gotten sick and he’d started working at the parlor, that was something he heard Reynolds tell people each day. But today Reynolds was talking to him. Today they were burying Bernard’s mother.
Bernard could hear Reynolds talking to the other grieving family again.
“Now, your basic cremation runya close to eight hundred. You can take Grandma out in a nice plastic box. Or you can put her in one of our decorative urns.” Reynolds waved a mottled hand toward a shelf of small vases. “We got blue ones and pink ones and some inlaid with pearl.” His smile revealed a row of new shimmering teeth.
Reynolds winked at the red-eyed man. “If you’re slick, you can sprinkle her from a skyscraper downtown, or the Neptune Society will take her for three eighty-five and scatter her ashes at sea. I had a feller take his wife’s ashes out in a bag. He sprinkled her all over the parking lot at Ross, which had always been his wife’s favorite store.”
The red-eyed old man trembled and burst into tears. His whole back quaked as he sobbed. Mr. Reynolds guided the man to the waiting room in the back and handed him a brochure about caskets.
“You folks ready to start?” Reynolds looked at Bernard.
Bernard glanced at his father, waiting for some kind of nod. Mr. Fowler was squeezing the wheelchair’s arms. His lips were clenched so tightly they were practically gone. His white hair was long and flowed down to his shoulders, but today it was woven and pulled back in a braid that cascaded over his black woolen collar. He was elegantly dressed, wearing a full tux and tails, saved from his wedding day over forty years ago. He looked like royalty in the long coat, satin vest, and gray tie. Only his Ray-Ban sunglasses knew the whole truth, but his dark glasses weren’t talking. They only reflected other people’s faces back or the blue and white sky-colored ceiling. No one could see the misery in his eyes or notice the wet on his cheeks.
Slowly, gesturing to his son, he lifted one of his age-spotted wrists.
“Yes,” Bernard told Reynolds. “We’re ready to start.”
Mr. Reynolds excused himself and ducked in a door. He emerged one minute later donning a white preacher’s collar. Greeting people along the way he walked down the aisle smiling, shaking hands, and offering condolences. His capped teeth looked slimy, and his eyes were always focused on a person across the way, like a prostitute peering inside a john’s car while scanning the street for police.
He shook Margie’s hand roughly. “I’m so sorry,” Reynolds said, but before she could comment, he was on to someone else, shoving an obituary in her palm. He did this all the way up the aisle, turning from left pew to right until he reached the front of the flower-drenched altar.
When he got to the front, he stopped at the wheelchair of Bernard’s father.
“Mr. Fowler, sir, I’d like to express my regret.” He shook the old man’s hand and then patted his back. “Your wife was a very fine woman,” he said.
He coughed loudly, and suddenly an organist started to play and a blind man sang “The Lord’s Prayer” in a throaty falsetto as Mr. Reynolds squeezed his eyes shut and quietly hummed along, looking the picture of sanctified glory.
When the song was finished, Mr. Reynolds opened his eyes. He breathed deeply and picked up a worn, tattered Bible.
“Dearly beloved,” Reynolds said, flipping the onionskin pages. He was stalling, trying to recall the deceased person’s name. “We are gathered here today on this solemn occasion . . .” he stopped in midsentence and started to hum wildly as if taken over by glory again.
“I say, we are gathered here today . . . can I get an Amen?” Reynolds barked this request like he was trying to wake the dead from their graves outside.
As if on cue, the small congregation said “Amen” together.
Seeing a copy of the obituary on a chair, Reynolds could finally go on and stop stalling. “We are here to honor our dear sweet sister, Alice Fowler.”
Margie scanned through the pews, looking around for the child. Paula should have been back from the bathroom by now. Margie rose from her seat and walked down the aisle. When she got to the bathroom, she lightly knocked on the door. Since no one answered, Margie jiggled the knob, but the small door was locked tight.
“Paul-la,” Margie called, knocking louder this time. “What are you doing in there?”
Bernard turned when he heard Margie knocking on the slim door.
“Paula, open this up at once!” Margie jiggled the handle in her hand. Pressing her ear to the door, she heard an older woman’s voice.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Margie, said. “I thought my daughter was in there.” The voice was too deep to belong to her child. Maybe Paula used the restroom and slipped out the front.
“Damn it,” Margie snapped, walking toward the front marbled entrance. The funeral had started. They were reading the obituary now. She needed to get back to the chapel. She and the child were a team.
Maybe the girl was playing outside near the graves. She’d kill her if she ruined that dress.
Margie walked to the entrance and opened the door. “Paula,” she called.
“Where are you, dear?” Margie blotted her lips and then smeared orange gloss across her mouth. She walked farther down the steps and saw a large family outside, gathered around a huge mound of dirt. The tractor was gone, and in its place was a pink casket. The casket was perched on an Astro Turf platform and completely drenched in hundreds of primroses. Surrounding the mound were tall, weeping reefs of more flowers and white chairs with foam-covered seats.
“Paulaaaaaa!” Margie screamed across the vast lawn, forcing her voice through the trees. It was freezing, and Margie pulled her sweater around her shoulders and glanced in the wild angry sky.
The large family turned toward Margie and stared. They were in the middle of a graveside service, and Margie was yelling from the steps with both hands hoisted on her hips.
Some of the family members shot Margie long dagger glares, but Margie couldn’t care less.
Margie desperately searched through the cemetery plots. She carelessly stepped over graves and kicked the flowers left next to headstones.
“If I snag my new hose, I swear I’ll make her pay!” Margie was livid. She snatched a twig from her face and kicked her pumps through the leaves. But she didn’t see Paula anywhere at all. The only kid she saw was a three-year-old brat, sucking his thumb in his fat father’s lap.
Margie went back inside the chapel again and looked around the opulent room again. She decided to try the bathroom handle once more, only this time the door twisted free.
There was Paula, standing with another woman at the mirror. The woman was a small, platinum blonde with beautiful, long, swirling hair. She had an athletic body with perky tennis ball breasts and an autumn’s worth of hazelnut skin. She was the prettiest woman at the chapel, and Margie scanned her hard. The woman was half Margie’s age, and if she were working a funeral con like her, then the woman would be steep competition.
Margie opened her purse and took out some gum. Chewing aggressively, while examining the scene, Margie popped her gum in the younger woman’s face.
“What are you doing?” Margie asked Paula, shooting the woman a look.
“Didn’t you hear me calling your name?”
“Look, Mommy, she gave me a Snickers bar, see!” The girl smiled, revealing a baby row of teeth, filled with chocolaty chewed nuts.
