Bill Canarsie
knows a consummate professional makes a good first impression. His appointment
is at 2:30, so he pulls into the driveway at 2:28. His car, the luxury sedan of the upper
middle-class, is sparkling obsidian, freshly washed and waxed. His jacket,
freshly scoured with a lint brush, sways on a hanger in the backseat. Standing
next to the car he slides into the jacket and smoothes it out with the flat of
his hand.
He reaches across
the backseat and retrieves his briefcase. It wouldn’t appear to you as anything
special. It’s a handsome briefcase, no cheap knockoff or a bushleaguer’s
attempt to outkick his coverage, but nothing remarkable at first glance.
Rebecca Musgrave
would never call herself wealthy, but when it comes time to draw up the new
class borders, she’ll end up squarely on the side of affluence. The Musgrave
house brings to mind words like sumptuous
and decadent and other adjectives
that pepper commercials for purportedly gourmet chocolate. Burnished
arabesques, crystalline panes, molasses-thick tapestries—think Louis XIV ruling
over Krypton.
Bill walks the
whitewashed path of brick that winds around the side of the house. We never use the front door, Musgrave
told him on the phone call. She answers the door in high-income casual, clothes
that cost top dollar to look unimpressive. He says no thank you to coffee, and
she leads him into the dining room. They sit across from one another. He rests
his briefcase on the floor, against the legs of his chair.
“I want to
apologize for my husband’s absence, Mr. Canarsie,” she says. “He’s at work
right now. He’s been handling most of the arrangements, and I think he just
needed a day away from it all.”
“Understandable,
Mrs. Musgrave. Have you told your husband about this meeting?”
Her fingers
jitterbug around themselves. “I… thought it would be best to take the meeting
and then decide if a conversation was even necessary.”
Bill nods. “So
you understand, Mrs. Musgrave, if you choose to engage my services, this will
be a legitimate business agreement. If you wish to make anyone else, including
your husband, a party to it, that is entirely your prerogative.”
“Well,” she says,
“I am little concerned about payment. I don’t even know how much you charge. My
friend made a point of talking around that.”
“What will happen
is I’ll listen to you, and once I have all the pertinent information, I’ll name
my price.”
Musgrave
swallows.
“But you’re more
concerned,” he says, “with your husband seeing the bank statement.”
“Yeah.”
Bill gives her
the same smile the sun splashes on the morning horizon. “We have ways around
that. We understand how at times like these emotions run high, and we’re very
sensitive to our clients’ desire for privacy. As I said, if you decide at any
point to inform Mr. Musgrave of our agreement, you have the right to do so at
no risk of incurring any kind of penalty, monetary or otherwise, from us. As
far as I’m concerned, your husband has nothing to do with this.”
She and every
muscle under her skin exhale. “Thank you,” she says. “So, uh, where should I
start?”
“Just one
moment.”
Bill retrieves
his briefcase and sets it on the table. It has no lock, but it knows to only
open for Bill Canarsie or his employers. What he takes from it and sets on the
table looks so conspicuously mundane, Musgrave wonders if it’s a recording
device. She doesn’t ask if it’s a recording device because it so clearly has to
be a recording device. And were she to ask, Bill would say that, yes, it is, a
proprietary recorder that allows for easy uploading of uncompressed audio files
to his company’s secured servers via satellite. He would tell her this, and she
would accept it without question as many others have. If he did tell her what
The Ear really was and where it had came from, she would ignore it for the sake
of her own sanity.
Bill says, “Why
don’t you start with how you came to hear of me?”
“Well,” she says,
“this woman—she’s one of my oldest friends—she’s married to someone who… knows
people the rest of us never learn about. Not that she’s gossipy. She’s not.
Well, not about… this. But she’s hinted before about—”
“I understand,
Mrs. Musgrave. Tell me about your son.”
The woman’s been
steeling herself for this all day. “Eric was our only child,” she says. “We
wanted to have more, but there were complications with my pregnancy, and we
were told it would be too risky. So, Eric became my world.” Tears threaten to
burst loose. “You spend every minute worrying about your child. I use to tell
myself it would prepare me in case something ever did happen. But you can’t
prepare yourself for the end of the world.”
Bill always keeps
a pristine handkerchief in his breast pocket. He’s handing it to her before the
first droplet crawls down her cheek.
“Thank you. My
friend told me about the service you provide. She explained how to contact you,
which to be honest would’ve made me laugh if I wasn’t convulsing every hour.
But… I figured, why not try. So, I performed the ritual, and a day later—”
“Protocols, Mrs.
Musgrave.”
“I’m sorry?”
“We prefer the
term protocols. I’m sorry to sound
hung up on nomenclature. I know it’s not what you care about now, but the word ritual gives the impression there’s
something mysterious and sinister about what I do.” He shakes his head. “I
provide a service to people, one that is intended to provide those in mourning
with some modicum of peace, and I take that responsibility seriously.”
“That’s what my
friend said, which is why I decided to contact you.”
“What have you
heard about the service I provide?”
“That you’re a
necrologist.”
“Do you know what
that is?”
“A fancy word for
someone who writes obituaries.”
Bill smiles with
a hint of laughter. “That’s right. Mrs. Musgrave, before we go any further, I
want to be clear about what it is I can and cannot do. An obituary is meant to
function a lot like a monument. It’s meant to celebrate someone who’s left us
and remind us of all that was special about them. About why they were so loved
and valued. I’m exceptional at doing that, but what I can’t do is turn back the
clock. What happened has happened. I can’t do anything about that.”
“But you can make
people forget? The parts we don’t want to celebrate?”
“I once wrote an
obituary for a man who was killed in a drunk driving accident. He was the drunk
driver, and he took half a school bus worth of children with him. When people
remember him now, they remember a civic-minded teetotaler who called his mother
every Sunday.”
Musgrave grips
Bill’s handkerchief for dear life. “Eric never had much time for me, even when
he was little. You know, you replay incidents, things you haven’t thought about
in years, things you thought you forgot, as if you can spot the pattern after
the fact and somehow change things. Last night my husband and I had a fight. I
told him that if he hadn’t given Eric a sip of his beer when he was nine… like
that would’ve changed anything.”
Bill reaches
across the table and lays his hand on Musgrave’s. A perfect touch at the
perfect time. “How bad did it get?” he asks.
“We knew he had a
problem in college. You know, when you find out you’re pregnant for the first
time, along with all the doctor’s appointments and classes and shopping and
everything, you should have to go to a therapist and learn how to combat
denial. We kept making excuses to ourselves for years until it got so bad we
couldn’t deny it anymore. He stole from us. Cash out of our pockets, the debit
cards out of our wallets. He totaled his car. Thank god no one was hurt. We
tried talking to him, we tried interventions, my husband had a fistfight with
him in the kitchen at three in the morning one night. Everyone kept telling us
we had to kick him out. He had to hit rock bottom.
“He got his
girlfriend addicted too. Then she stole from him, and he beat her. When we
confronted him, he… he scared us. That’s when we kicked him out. ‘Eric, you
either leave this house right now and don’t come back until you’re sober, or
you’re going to jail tonight.’ He would call sometimes, try to make us feel
guilty. But we wouldn’t budge. Not as long as he was using. The police said
that he had spent the last couple months prostituting himself. To support his
habit. And apparently he crossed the wrong people. They beat him to death.”
Musgrave’s head
falls to the table and she waters it like a flowerbed. But Bill keeps hold of
both her hands and lets the warmth and the empathy seep through his palms until
it buttresses her upright.
“I don’t want
people to remember Eric like that,” she chokes between sobs.
“You want them to
remember a young man with a bright future.”
“Yes.”
“You want them to
remember a young man of character and dignity. A young man who made others
smile and brought love with him everywhere.”
Musgrave nods.
“I can do that
for you, Mrs. Musgrave, but only if you tell me the truth.”
Bill feels that
familiar frisson in her hands, the one the guilty man feels when he knows he’s
caught but isn’t ready to give it up. He’s felt it in countless clients before.
Musgrave’s terror
drapes itself in indignant finery as she pulls her hands away. “What do you
mean?”
“How’s your
marriage, Mrs. Musgrave?”
“W-what exactly
does…”
“What’s the state
of your relationship with Mr. Musgrave?”
“Where do you get
the nerve?”
“My job.”
“My marriage is
none of your business, Mr. Canarsie.”
“I’m afraid it
is. In order for me to compose an obituary that will have the desired effect, I
need to know what effect is desired.”
“I just told
you.”
“No. You told me
a lie, Mrs. Musgrave.”
“Do not come into
my home and call me a liar.”
“Mrs. Musgrave,
if I come across as presumptuous or arrogant, it only seems that way because
I’m very good at what I do. You were not lying about your son’s life or the
circumstances of his death. I’d have known if you were. I also know you’re not
worried about what your friends and acquaintances will say or think about your
son. But you are genuinely concerned about the repercussions of Eric’s legacy
being one of dying violently as a disgraced drug-addicted prostitute.”
“Don’t you say
his—”
“So, again, Mrs.
Musgrave, how is your marriage?”
Bill keeps his
stare bullseyed. It never leaves her, and she has to look away before she
crumbles under the scrutiny of a shark. Even with her head turned, the weight
is insurmountable.
“He can’t look at
me,” she says. “Last night he said he wasn’t going to the funeral if I was
there.”
Bill leans back
in his chair, folds his hands in his lap, and keeps his eyes on the woman.
She says, “I
don’t care if he sees the checkbook.”
Bill nods, and
exposes the one unconscious chink in his professionalism. He adjusts The Ear.
That’s all, just a small shift one half-inch in the direction of his client.
It’s so minor a breach, any boss in his right mind would let it slide.
He says, “I can
help you, Mrs. Musgrave. I can write an obituary that will leave everyone,
including your husband, remembering Eric as a forthright and loving son.”
“Thank you! Thank
you, Mr. Canarsie. When will you have it done by?”
“It will be in
every local paper tomorrow morning.”
“And how will I
know… when, I mean, if…”
“It will take
effect at midnight tonight.”
“Thank you.”
Bill smiles.
“How much do I
owe you?” she asks.
“Your husband.”
“Excuse me?”
“Mr. Musgrave
will now work for my employers.”
He lets the woman
take the time to process, ignoring the sputtered false starts of disbelief and
denial.
Finally she gets
out, “Is this what you normally do? Make some insane joke at the end?”
“No, Mrs.
Musgrave.”
“It’s because of
the price, right? It’s so obscene, you start by saying it’s something
impossibly crazy?”
“No, Mrs.
Musgrave.”
She can’t help
but chuckle. “Wait. First of all, my husband’s a chemical engineer.”
“My employers
will find use for a chemical engineer.”
“What’ll he be
doing?”
“That’s not your
concern, Mrs. Musgrave.”
“What’ll he be
making?”
“Not your
concern, Mrs. Musgrave.”
“Stop calling me
‘Mrs. Musgrave.’ This is absurd. You can’t make someone come work for you. He’s
not an indentured servant.”
“We don’t use
that term.”
This is the point
at which the client is blown away by the audacity, the sheer audacity of it
all. Musgrave follows suit, and her laugh grows manic as she grasps at whatever
straws of rationalization lay within reach. Bill, consummate, doesn’t let on
how much he enjoys his job.
“This is fucking
ridiculous,” the woman says. “I should’ve figured this was some sort of con.”
“It’s not, Mrs.
Musgrave.”
“Shut up! Then
it’s some kind of prank or weird therapy thing. It has to be, because if it was
real, my husband would have to agree, and there is no way my husband would
agree to this.”
“He already has.”
“Enough. All
right? Enough! What is the matter with you? Do you do this with every person
you go to see? Do you really get off on—”
She’s left her
phone on the kitchen counter, so the alarum sounds as heavy plastic on buffed
marble mixed with the compressed tin wave of “Lips Like Sugar.” Musgrave chases
after it with a trickle of Pavlovian drool. She looks at the number and
answers. “Tom?… Tom, you have no idea what’s happening right now. There’s a…
What?… Tom, what are you talking about?… What do you mean you’re not coming
home?”
If Bill’s job
required him to listen to the Musgraves’ marriage come to an end, he would, but
the who-says-what-and-when is irrelevant. Too bad. On any other day Bill’s mind
would be turning to his next appointment. It would be dry-running through
potential turns in the conversation, ghost-steering the client toward a sale.
But today a rarity transpires: work weaves an accidental spell and triggers
thoughts about Bill Canarsie’s personal life. I hope it’s not the start of a
bad trend.
Bill uses his own
cell phone to call his son. At first he can’t complete the call as dialed, then
he remembers to enable interdimensional roaming. He gets through on the second
try, but it goes to voicemail. “Hello, Rhesus. It’s your father. I haven’t
heard from you since you got there. I had a minute, and I wanted to see how the
new post was treating you, find out how you’re acclimating, all that. I
shouldn’t have to be the one to call though. Listen, don’t be an ignorant
American in a foreign dimension, all right? It’s not like you’re a diplomat to
some banana republic. It’s a serious thing. Call me tonight.”
Bill hangs up as
Mrs. Musgrave’s hysteria crescendos. “What is happening? Why are you doing
this? Tom? Tom!?!”
Bill waits for
the tear-wracked wound to drift into his field of vision, but Musgrave can’t
collect enough of herself to move beyond turning in his general direction.
“What are you?”
she asks.
Bill doesn’t turn
to face her. “I promise you I’m simply a man, Mrs. Musgrave. Like your husband
and your friends’ husband I have a professional responsibility. I’m seeing to
it right now.”
“I don’t want this.”
“It’s done, Mrs.
Musgrave.”
“I DON’T WANT
THIS!!!”
Bill returns The
Ear to his briefcase and closes it. He stands and faces her, never forgetting
the necessity of quality customer service. “Please calm yourself, ma’am.
Screaming will not change anything.”
“You’re a
monster.”
“I’m a
businessman, Mrs. Musgrave. I charge what the market will bear.”
Her eyes are off
him, searching somewhere for something she can’t even consider. “You can’t do
this.”
“You can dispute
the charge,” Bill says. “You can find people who will fight on your behalf, but
I wouldn’t advise it. If my price is too steep, you do not want to pay theirs.
Good day, ma’am.”
Bill heads for
the door, his footsteps lightened with the satisfaction of a job well done.
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