Speak the Dead (2 page)

1

T
alking to the dead isn't as creepy as people might imagine.

Sally knew most people liked to think of the dead as empty vessels; the corpse nothing but leftover meat, fat, and juices that the soul leaves behind like unwanted baggage after it has moved on to bigger and better things. She just happened to disagree.

The dead had feelings. They responded to music and speech and the touch of the living. She didn't know what it was, leftover energy maybe? But when she talked to the dead, they responded in subtle ways. The gray flesh became more pliant, the air around them grew less frigid, and this allowed the makeup—foundation, rouge, eyeliner, lipstick—to go on smoother and emit a more natural glow.

Sally often got the feeling that the time she spent with a guest was the first he or she had been touched by a gentle hand in a long, long time.

“Isn't that right, Mrs. Shoumatoff?” Sally said as she rinsed shampoo from the dead woman's brittle hair.

Mrs. Shoumatoff was having her funeral that afternoon, but the director had confided in Sally that he didn't know if anyone was going to attend. No one had responded to the notice he wrote and placed in the local newspaper, and so he was planning to contact the local Mourners Club to see if it could send some members to fill a few seats.

Mr. William Payne, senior director of Paynes' Funeral Home, disliked an empty funeral. But with the promise of pots of coffee and Earl Grey tea, china cups, and his wife's delicious home baking, he could usually guarantee at least a half-dozen, white-haired or blue-rinsed mourners on short notice.

Using the parlor's much advertised and very popular installment package, Mrs. Shoumatoff had paid for her funeral in advance. She had requested an open coffin (“If possible,” she wrote in the contract). Her handwriting was elegant and spoke of a formal European education, but under occupation she had written:
cleaning lady, retired
.

Her husband hadn't known about the funeral arrangements. It was the county coroner's assistant who found the contract for Paynes' Funeral Home inside Mrs. Shoumatoff's apron pocket. She had been wearing the apron when she died and, according to her husband, was rarely seen without it.

In the death certificate that accompanied Mrs. Shoumatoff from the morgue the coroner had ruled the death as accidental. Mrs. Shoumatoff had tripped on the living room carpet and struck her head on the corner of a brick fireplace. Death was not instantaneous but neither was it lingering. The only puzzle was why, especially for a retired cleaning lady, was she rushing through the living room with her apron and hands covered in white flour.

When the husband was told of the funeral arrangements, he asked if he could go with a cheaper option instead, and have the difference refunded to him in cash. Mr. Payne politely informed him that was not an option.

Mr. Shoumatoff had not taken the news well, and when Mr. Payne asked if he would like to provide one of his wife's favorite dresses for the funeral, he had cursed the Payne family lineage and stormed out.

Mr. Payne did not believe he would return. Not even for the funeral.

This was not an entirely new situation. Sometimes it was grief, other times it was anger or denial or bitterness. Sally had even known jealousy to play a part. Whatever the reason, Sally never allowed her guests to look anything but their best.

To that end, she had established a wonderful rapport with the ladies at the Salvation Army thrift store, conveniently located less than half a block from the funeral home. This afternoon, Mrs. Shoumatoff would be wearing a lovely green dress with subtle gold accents. The lace embroidery on collar and hem—which the Sally Ann ladies had mended perfectly—had a definite European flavor, and Sally believed Mrs. Shoumatoff would approve.

Her one dilemma was the apron. It had become so much a part of the woman's identity, but Sally didn't know if that was of her own choosing. She could tell from the scars on the woman's body as she cleaned and dressed her that life had been a hardship, but Sally didn't know if the apron brought her comfort or was yet another form of domestic bondage.

“What do you say, Mrs. Shoumatoff?” Sally asked as she combed the corpse's damp hair.

As was to be expected, Mrs. Shoumatoff didn't answer.

Sally rubbed in another dab of conditioner and combed out the last stubborn flakes of dried blood. It had taken a thin layer of molding wax and a few extra dabs of foundation to fill the dent from her fall. The flesh had split down to the bone, but it was nothing that couldn't be fixed, especially in the talented hands of the parlor's lead mortician, Jesús Moroles.

“I think we'll leave the apron off,” Sally said.

She touched Mrs. Shoumatoff's cheek. The flesh was stiff and cold.

“But I'll put it in the casket beside you, how's that?”

Sally touched the woman's cheek again. A barely perceptible warmth had softened and relaxed the skin. Sally beamed.

After gently blow-drying the woman's hair and adding a few soft curls with an iron, Sally moved on to makeup.

As Sally explained to Mrs. Shoumatoff, makeup for the dead is not the same as for the living. The skin—which is just another organ, albeit with a surface area of around two square meters—no longer breathes; it is kept chilled and the natural dehydration that begins at death destroys elasticity.

To preserve the body, as decomposition happened faster than most people thought, a surgical tube was inserted into the carotid artery, giving direct access to the heart. Approximately two to three gallons of formaldehyde-based embalming fluid was then pumped into the arterial system. This procedure flooded the capillaries and forced all the blood in the body out of a second tube in the jugular vein. At Paynes, the embalmer added a special pink dye to the fluid as a way to counteract death's dull pallor. The pungent fluid looked rather like Pepto Bismol.

After embalming, Sally's secret to reviving natural beauty was done in four stages. The first was a hydrating layer of cold cream. The second was a flesh-colored layer of oil-based foundation, applied carefully to hands and face in short, quick strokes.

Once the base was dry, the third stage was a translucent water-based cosmetic that allowed for a variation in tone to show through. This was the layer that returned life to the bloodless skin.

The fourth stage was what separated the cosmetician from the artist.

In the living, the first things Sally tended to notice were the eyes. Being a window on the soul, a sparkle in the eye expressed so much. But with the dead, the eyes are closed, and necessarily so. Shortly after death, the eyes, which are mostly water, begin to collapse. To preserve the illusion of peaceful slumber, special gel-coated discs were inserted under the eyelids before they were sealed with a needle-thin line of glue.

With the eyes closed, it was the mouth that became the most crucial area.

Sally had learned the reason the dead tend to look sad was because the round muscle of the mouth relaxed at death, causing the corners to droop. To correct this, Sally used more of her special adhesive to hold the lips together and then applied a colorless wax to shape and soften the line. At Madame Tussauds' famous wax museums, the artists made the stars' smiles fill a room, but at Paynes' Funeral Home, Sally's job was to simply make the dead look at peace.

A grinning corpse could give mourners nightmares.

The finishing touch was a dab of oyster-shell gel that Sally created herself to bring warmth and shine to the lips.

Once the mouth was complete, Sally lightly brushed a subtle coral blue onto the natural hotspots—jaw, cheeks, and eyelids—to add shadow and depth.

“Nearly done, Mrs. Shoumatoff,” Sally said cheerfully. “Thank you for being so patient.”

Being careful not to overdo it, Sally lifted a ball pump and antique glass decanter from her cosmetics bag and sprayed a mist of fine powder across the surface of the dead woman's skin. The powder was used to seal the cosmetics and flatten out any distracting shine.

Satisfied with her work, Sally smiled down at her guest. Mrs. Shoumatoff looked ready for a night of cheek-to-cheek dancing and one last stolen kiss.

With a contented sigh, Sally glanced up at the clock on the wall. Three a.m. It seemed later, somehow.

After returning Mrs. Shoumatoff to cold storage, Sally decided to brew a fresh pot of coffee before wheeling out her next guest, Mr. Lombardo.

The men never took as long as the women.

In death as in life, she supposed.

2

W
ith a wide grin splitting his face, Jersey Castle soaked in the raucous applause and ear piercing whistles from the amped-up audience as he brought his drum solo to its head-banging crescendo. Sweat flew in all directions as, with a final crash of the cymbals, he tossed a pair of hickory drumsticks into the air.

At the front of the stage, dressed in head-to-toe black leather, chromed spikes, and face piercings, John “Johnny” Simpkins, lead singer of
The Rotten Johnnys
, was snarling at the crowd, the index and middle fingers of both hands raised and parted in rude defiance.

“What ya cheering for, ya wankers?” Johnny yelled in his horribly fake British accent. “We were crap!”

The crowd roared its approval.

Still grinning like a fool, Jersey slid out from behind his drum kit and exited the stage. In his form-fitting, black leather pants, ripped T-shirt, and bandoleer of rusted chain, he was perspiring like a junkie in the holding tank and badly needed re-hydrating.

“Great set, Skunk,” said Malcolm “The Mouse” Malkovich, the Rottens' publicist and manager. He handed Jersey a large bottle of water. “I thought you were going to burst those skins.”

Jersey gulped the water greedily, not caring as the cold liquid dribbled out of his mouth and onto his sweat-drenched chest.

“I'm getting too old for this,” he said.

Pouring water into his palm, Jersey splashed it across his close-cropped black hair. His stage name, Skunk, came from a natural streak of premature white that began just below the peak of his hairline before zigzagging off in a lightning bolt pattern to a spot above his right ear. It made him look like the love child of Frankenstein's Bride and Pepé Le Pew.

He nodded in the direction of the audience. “Most of them look underage.”

Malkovich shouted to be heard over the crowd as Johnny continued to abuse his fans. “That's what keeps you young. If you were playing to a load of seniors, I'd tell you to hang it up, but punk is big with the kids again. Five years ago, a tubby bastard like you wouldn't be allowed near a stage, never mind drumming in a sold-out gig.”

“Tubby?” Jersey protested.

“Hey!” Malkovich held up his hands, allowing his fake diamond rings to catch the light. “Just a figure of speech.”

“You do remember I'm licensed to carry a gun, right?”

“Come on, lighten up, you know I love you, man.”

Jersey looked Malkovich up and down, taking in the vintage 1970s crocodile-print suit, purple silk shirt opened to just above the navel, and a half-dozen assorted gold chains tangled in a nest of graying chest hair.

“That's what I'm afraid of.”

Johnny and the rest of the band—Fudge on bass, Tick on guitar—joined them in the wings.

“You two fighting again?” Johnny swept his drenched hair out of his eyes, rivers of sweat running black from the excess dye he used to keep a firm rein on his receding youth. Comically, the gold chain that ran from a piercing on his lip to another on his left nostril had snapped in half and dangled from his nose.

“He implied I was fat,” said Jersey.

“You threaten to shoot him?” asked Johnny.

“I did.”

Johnny turned to Malkovich. “He'll do it, you know? He may be a chubby bastard, but he's a damn good shot. Even has a medal for it.”

Jersey tried to make his grin look fierce. “You should remember that, too, Johnny, instead of prancing around like a Bond villain.”

“A Bond villain?”

Jersey grinned wider. “Yeah,
Gold
Booger
.” He touched the side of his nose. “Look in the mirror.”

Johnny reached up and discovered the broken chain.

“Ah shit, when did that happen? I must have looked a right idiot.”

“You?” Jersey's tongue burrowed into his cheek. “I can't imagine.”

“Ha, Ha.” Johnny stormed off to the green room at the rear of the club.

As the crowd took the hint that there would be no second encore, the house DJ flooded the bar with mellower go-home music. Relaxing, the four men followed Johnny's lead. Inside a storage closet that had been converted to seat six with folding chairs, a large mirror, and a small bar fridge, the Rottens cracked open a chilled six-pack of Heineken.

Jersey took a long pull of Dutch lager. “You know what I was thinking?”

“How good my ass still looks in these pants?” quipped Johnny.

“Besides that.”

Johnny unclipped the chains from his piercings and dropped them into a purple velvet drawstring bag that had once contained a bottle of Crown Royal Canadian whisky. “Tell me?”

“The crowd really got into
God Save the Queen
on the encore, so what if we tried a Rotten version of
Star Spangled
Banner
?”

Johnny shrugged. “The Pistols never did it, but I guess if the New York Philharmonic can play it in North Korea… I don't see why not.”

“We could throw in some light and sound effects,” Tick jumped in excitedly. “You know for
rockets' red glare
and
bombs bursting in
air
.”

Johnny started to laugh. “And maybe a few ‘Fuck Yous' after the line, ‘
where is that band who so vauntingly
swore'
.”

“Yeah, that's the spirit,” Jersey agreed. “With the right inflection we could make it an anti-war anthem.”

Malkovich turned pale. “Err, guys, that could get us in trouble.”

“We're a punk band, Mouse,” said Jersey. “Trouble is our business.”

“No,” argued Malkovich. “Getting people to pay to watch you old farts relive some other band's glory days is our business.”

Johnny laughed harder. “Get us some more beers, Mouse. The boys did Rotten proud tonight.”