We find Luke in a back bedroom arguing with some frat-boy looking motherfucker. There are a few other people sitting around, but everyone seems sequestered in their own groups, not paying attention to each other. There are a couple open chairs around them, so we take a seat. “Just think about it,” Luke says. “If you were in that position, and no one would know, you can’t tell me you wouldn’t try.”
“That’s disgusting, man, I can’t believe you would even think about that shit.” The blonde boy shakes his head. He looks familiar. Maybe I went to school with this guy, sometime a million years ago. “I wouldn’t even consider it.”
“You’re a liar!” Luke exclaims, making a couple people look over at us. “I’d say that a huge percentage do it. I’d go as far as to say that at least ninety percent of all morticians have experimented with necrophilia.” He looks over at us. Realizing we don’t actually know each other, Luke points to us and says, “Chaz, this is Pete and Jesse. Pete and Jesse, this is Chaz.” He nods to Pete again. “Tell him, Pete, you know about morticians.”
Pete nods with a total lack of assurance. “Oh yeah, ninety percent easily.”
A boy in a Modest Mouse T-shirt and a girl in a Motorhead jacket leave the room. Three girls remain, but keep an eye on us.
"No way, no fucking way,” Chaz protests. “I don’t believe it.”
“Dude,” Luke says to Chaz, staring him down. “You’re being childish. I mean, think about it: This bitch is there on the table. She’s young, she’s cute, she’s dead. It’s right there in front of you, and no one is going to know you do it. I’m saying ninety percent just to take into account there might be a couple that don’t.
Chaz shakes his head. “Maybe a couple do, here and there–sick ones. Maybe... less than one percent have done it.”
“Have done it?! Jesus Christ, man! Maybe I was a little overshooting with the ninety percent. Ninety percent have thought about it. Easily ninety percent, but I think definitely fifty percent have done the deed, at least once.”
“No way.”
“At least once. Why do you think those guys get the profession? They already have a thing for dead chicks.”
“Like that episode of 'the X-Files,'” I chime in.
“See!” Luke cries. “Now I’ve got something to back me up!”
“Back you up?!” Chaz exclaims. “It’s a fucking TV show!”
“A television show with a basis on fact.”
Chaz shakes his head. “You are trying to tell me that at least one out of two morticians spends his nights banging dead chicks? These are guys with families, decent, upstanding members of the community.”
“I didn’t say every night. I’ll agree with you that the number for that is way lower, maybe ten, fifteen percent. I’m talking about the ones that only did it once, just to see what it was like. Personally, I think it’s more, but I’ll come down to you with the fifty.”
“All right, maybe fifty percent have copped a feel...”
“I’m not talking about copping a feel, I’m talking about full-on penetration.” Luke drums the table. “I’m sure one hundred percent have copped a feel.”
“No way.”
“Dude, just look at the facts!”
“What facts? I bet maybe fifty percent have put thought into it...”
“Every single one of those motherfuckers have put thought into it. I’m saying fifty percent have done it. Almost all of them have copped a feel.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“What’s so disgusting? I’m not talking about a major trauma victim here, I’m talking about just your average dead girl. She’s still looking fine.”
“This is ridiculous,” Chaz says.
“How about that Tom Petty video?” Pete says, tossing a ball into the court.
“What about it?” Chaz asks.
“What about it?” Luke exclaims, catching the ball and running with it. ”What about it?! If that doesn’t prove my point, I don’t know what does.”
“How does that video prove your point at all?” Chaz asks. I must admit that I’m just as curious to find out.
“He plays a mortician who goes on a date with, and probably has sex with one of the bodies in his morgue.”
“And?”
“And, Tom Petty is a big damn star! He’s no underground rocker here, he’s a Traveling Willbury. This mortician sex scene has to be pretty big if someone like Tom Petty is going to have a video about it.”
“There’s also a TSOL song,” Pete offers. “‘Code Blue.’”
Luke nods to him, but obviously doesn’t want to use it. “See, it’s these old, lonely guys who get jobs as morticians because they have a fetish for screwing lifeless, unanimated women. Hell, at home, they probably have to drug their wives before they can even get it up.”
“I saw an episode of 'Law & Order' about that,” I offer.
“See!” Luke cries. “It’s all over the media. Everyone knows about this but you! Look at the facts!”
“Dude, I have a friend from college who is a mortician, and...”
“Of course he’s not going to tell you about it!” Pete cries.
“No, of course not,” Luke affirms. “You would think he was a sick freak, but believe me, it’s perfectly normal within the mortician community to engage in such acts.”
“And how do you know this? Are you a mortician?”
“Look at the facts!” Luke cries, extending his hands before him like the evidence was spread out on the table. “It’s obvious what gets these guys off, but you won’t accept it!”
“They have cameras...”
“No they don’t have cameras,” Luke says, waving his hand. “They own the funeral parlors themselves, they don’t put up cameras to monitor their own actions.”
“There is also that band, Mortician,” Pete says. “They sing about sex with corpses.”
Luke nods, accepting it, but not pushing it. “Why do you think there are no female morticians?”
“Oh, and you know there are none?”
“There are three in the entire Continental United States. I think there is another one in Hawaii. Shit like this doesn’t get the girls off, so they don’t take the job.”
I know this dizzying conversation could go on for hours, but my beer is empty. I really want to see if Mike, or anyone else I know is around, or maybe run into Eva again.
I fight my way onto the back porch, which is empty, despite the presence of the keg. I pour myself a cup, and fight my way back inside.
I shouldn’t bother with Eva, shouldn’t get her involved in the train-wreck of my life. I mean, if she is as easy as Pete says, then that would be great, but why would she want me?
I work my way into the living room and scope out the scene. There are so many college pretty-boys here, and she is so hot. If she did want some random hook-up tonight, why would she even consider me? I bet some of these guys majored in fucking at college. Some of these guys are chiseled Adonises, where as I’m out of shape and carrying a small spare tire from all the beer I drink at work. I’m nowhere near in this girl’s league, and if I started coming on to her, she would know it in a second. I should just set my sights on drinking too much beer and throwing up in Pete’s car on the way home. He would deserve it just for bringing me here and introducing her to me.
I don’t know anyone in the living room, so I make my way downstairs. I don’t know why I’m so drawn to this girl that I’ve only seen once. Normally, I would just accept that I couldn’t have her before the thought even formed in my head. Now though, I feel like I have to try. I could just talk to her, just for a minute, and see how things go. I mean, I’ll know right away if she likes me and all, won’t I?
I turn left off the stairs and go down a short hall into the den. There aren’t many people in here, it looks like a lot of them have taken off, and most of the rest are upstairs. I don’t recognize anyone here either...
Except Eva.
She is standing immediately to my left when I walk into the room. Before I can step back and not be seen, she turns to me and smiles–smiles really broadly–and says, “You’re Pete’s friend, right... You’re... Jess?”
I’m so taken aback by her remembering my name that I nearly drop my beer. “Ye... yeah, Jesse,” I stammer, talking a step closer to her. “And you’re Eva.”
She nods, still smiling. “Yep, and this,” she says, gesturing to the rest of the room, “is my bedroom. Do you like it?”
I glance around. Of course I like it. If keeping her talking to me involved getting kicked in the nuts, I would probably like it. There is a futon in the back of the room, and a couch in the center, which is facing a television on a music video station with the sound off. The steady thump of the techno that replaced the New Wave shakes the ceiling. There are a guy and a girl sitting on the couch that I wish to God weren’t there. “Yeah,” I say, sipping my beer. “It’s really nice.”
“Great,” she says. This girl is so drunk. It probably would be wrong for me to try anything with her. That would be horrible, but there is no way she would like me normally, not this beauty queen. One of the jock guys upstairs was probably waiting for her to get this drunk so he could take advantage of her too. I wouldn’t fuck her over though, I wouldn’t screw her and forget about her. I would still want to see her in the morning. I would want to be with her.
Of course, I can’t. I can’t be with anyone, not for long. If I did anything with her, it would be just as bad as one of those jock guys upstairs.
“Let’s sit down,” she says, grabbing my hand and pointing to the couch as the guy and the girl vacate it. She pulls me toward it and I can’t help but follow. When we are seated, she says, “So where do you know Pete from?”
He already told her this, didn’t he? “Oh, we went to school together. I’ve know him since we were little kids.” She is sitting so close to me.
“So you live around here?” Her arm is pressed against mine.
“Yeah, I live in the city. Actually, I work at the Myer Road Bar not too far from here.”
“Oh!” she cries out. “I know that place. We used to go there in high school, because they would serve anyone.”
I nod. “Yeah, the owner has gotten in trouble for that. It’s run by his brother now, so we are mostly on the level.”
“Mostly?” she asks.
“I still occasionally judge people by their looks,” I say. “Sometimes I judge wrong. I haven’t gotten in trouble for it yet, though.”
“Yet,” she says with a laugh, throwing her head back as she does so.
I can’t help but kiss her. To my surprise, she doesn’t fight against me in the least, even pushing me back and taking control of the situation. She jams her tongue into my mouth and shoves me down on the couch, clawing at my chest. For a moment, I’m too stunned to react. I can hardly believe that a simple moment of weakness actually paid off. She straddles me, and I can feel the warmth of her groin against mine.
Suddenly, she stops. As she gets off me, I’m sure she’s realized what has happened, and now I will never get to see her again. Why would she want to kiss me? I don’t even look at her as she walks away, not until I hear the door close and lock. I sit up and look over at her as she is coming over to me. She is pulling off her sweater and tossing it on the floor. “Come here," she says, going to the futon. When I follow orders, she grabs me and starts kissing me again. She is as tall as I am and I don’t have to stoop to do it. She pulls me down onto the bed and we fumble with each other’s clothes.
The sex is swift and awkward, but Eva seems to enjoy it. When it’s over, she falls asleep quickly, pressed against me. I lie wide awake in the dim light of her bedroom, listening to the sounds of the fading party above us and the hum of the television. I think about me. I think about her. I don’t want to care about it. I don’t want to care about her. I don’t want to care about any of them. What have they done to even deserve it?
I lay there for along time before I extricate myself from under Eva. When I pull a blanket over her, she doesn’t show any signs of stirring, so I seek out my clothes and get dressed.
Pete is on the couch, talking to some guy I don’t recognize as I come upstairs. “Hey!” he calls out. “I was just about to leave without you. Where have you been?” When I don’t answer, he says, “Oh... Right on!” He gets up and comes over to give me a high-five, but I don’t respond.
“I’m wicked tired,” I say. “Let’s just get out of here.”
I’m fairly quiet on the way home, pretending to doze in an effort to ignore Pete’s suggestive questions. When he pulls up in front of my apartment, I don’t even say goodbye.
My apartment is dark and smells musty. I really wish someone was here right now, gun in hand, waiting to kill me. It would make things so much simpler. The rest of the world could get on with their lives and stop worrying about me. I’m sick of all of it. I’m sick of the responsibility. I’m sick of hearing about how much I’m supposed to care about people, when I don’t.
I run to the bathroom and vomit. It’s long and hard, and I sit there, staring down at the pool for a long time, sobbing. After a while, I get up, wash off my puke-splattered face and go to bed.
Go to Chapter 30
“That’s disgusting, man, I can’t believe you would even think about that shit.” The blonde boy shakes his head. He looks familiar. Maybe I went to school with this guy, sometime a million years ago. “I wouldn’t even consider it.”
“You’re a liar!” Luke exclaims, making a couple people look over at us. “I’d say that a huge percentage do it. I’d go as far as to say that at least ninety percent of all morticians have experimented with necrophilia.” He looks over at us. Realizing we don’t actually know each other, Luke points to us and says, “Chaz, this is Pete and Jesse. Pete and Jesse, this is Chaz.” He nods to Pete again. “Tell him, Pete, you know about morticians.”
Pete nods with a total lack of assurance. “Oh yeah, ninety percent easily.”
A boy in a Modest Mouse T-shirt and a girl in a Motorhead jacket leave the room. Three girls remain, but keep an eye on us.
"No way, no fucking way,” Chaz protests. “I don’t believe it.”
“Dude,” Luke says to Chaz, staring him down. “You’re being childish. I mean, think about it: This bitch is there on the table. She’s young, she’s cute, she’s dead. It’s right there in front of you, and no one is going to know you do it. I’m saying ninety percent just to take into account there might be a couple that don’t.
Chaz shakes his head. “Maybe a couple do, here and there–sick ones. Maybe... less than one percent have done it.”
“Have done it?! Jesus Christ, man! Maybe I was a little overshooting with the ninety percent. Ninety percent have thought about it. Easily ninety percent, but I think definitely fifty percent have done the deed, at least once.”
“No way.”
“At least once. Why do you think those guys get the profession? They already have a thing for dead chicks.”
“Like that episode of 'the X-Files,'” I chime in.
“See!” Luke cries. “Now I’ve got something to back me up!”
“Back you up?!” Chaz exclaims. “It’s a fucking TV show!”
“A television show with a basis on fact.”
Chaz shakes his head. “You are trying to tell me that at least one out of two morticians spends his nights banging dead chicks? These are guys with families, decent, upstanding members of the community.”
“I didn’t say every night. I’ll agree with you that the number for that is way lower, maybe ten, fifteen percent. I’m talking about the ones that only did it once, just to see what it was like. Personally, I think it’s more, but I’ll come down to you with the fifty.”
“All right, maybe fifty percent have copped a feel...”
“I’m not talking about copping a feel, I’m talking about full-on penetration.” Luke drums the table. “I’m sure one hundred percent have copped a feel.”
“No way.”
“Dude, just look at the facts!”
“What facts? I bet maybe fifty percent have put thought into it...”
“Every single one of those motherfuckers have put thought into it. I’m saying fifty percent have done it. Almost all of them have copped a feel.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“What’s so disgusting? I’m not talking about a major trauma victim here, I’m talking about just your average dead girl. She’s still looking fine.”
“This is ridiculous,” Chaz says.
“How about that Tom Petty video?” Pete says, tossing a ball into the court.
“What about it?” Chaz asks.
“What about it?” Luke exclaims, catching the ball and running with it. ”What about it?! If that doesn’t prove my point, I don’t know what does.”
“How does that video prove your point at all?” Chaz asks. I must admit that I’m just as curious to find out.
“He plays a mortician who goes on a date with, and probably has sex with one of the bodies in his morgue.”
“And?”
“And, Tom Petty is a big damn star! He’s no underground rocker here, he’s a Traveling Willbury. This mortician sex scene has to be pretty big if someone like Tom Petty is going to have a video about it.”
“There’s also a TSOL song,” Pete offers. “‘Code Blue.’”
Luke nods to him, but obviously doesn’t want to use it. “See, it’s these old, lonely guys who get jobs as morticians because they have a fetish for screwing lifeless, unanimated women. Hell, at home, they probably have to drug their wives before they can even get it up.”
“I saw an episode of 'Law & Order' about that,” I offer.
“See!” Luke cries. “It’s all over the media. Everyone knows about this but you! Look at the facts!”
“Dude, I have a friend from college who is a mortician, and...”
“Of course he’s not going to tell you about it!” Pete cries.
“No, of course not,” Luke affirms. “You would think he was a sick freak, but believe me, it’s perfectly normal within the mortician community to engage in such acts.”
“And how do you know this? Are you a mortician?”
“Look at the facts!” Luke cries, extending his hands before him like the evidence was spread out on the table. “It’s obvious what gets these guys off, but you won’t accept it!”
“They have cameras...”
“No they don’t have cameras,” Luke says, waving his hand. “They own the funeral parlors themselves, they don’t put up cameras to monitor their own actions.”
“There is also that band, Mortician,” Pete says. “They sing about sex with corpses.”
Luke nods, accepting it, but not pushing it. “Why do you think there are no female morticians?”
“Oh, and you know there are none?”
“There are three in the entire Continental United States. I think there is another one in Hawaii. Shit like this doesn’t get the girls off, so they don’t take the job.”
I know this dizzying conversation could go on for hours, but my beer is empty. I really want to see if Mike, or anyone else I know is around, or maybe run into Eva again.
I fight my way onto the back porch, which is empty, despite the presence of the keg. I pour myself a cup, and fight my way back inside.
I shouldn’t bother with Eva, shouldn’t get her involved in the train-wreck of my life. I mean, if she is as easy as Pete says, then that would be great, but why would she want me?
I work my way into the living room and scope out the scene. There are so many college pretty-boys here, and she is so hot. If she did want some random hook-up tonight, why would she even consider me? I bet some of these guys majored in fucking at college. Some of these guys are chiseled Adonises, where as I’m out of shape and carrying a small spare tire from all the beer I drink at work. I’m nowhere near in this girl’s league, and if I started coming on to her, she would know it in a second. I should just set my sights on drinking too much beer and throwing up in Pete’s car on the way home. He would deserve it just for bringing me here and introducing her to me.
I don’t know anyone in the living room, so I make my way downstairs. I don’t know why I’m so drawn to this girl that I’ve only seen once. Normally, I would just accept that I couldn’t have her before the thought even formed in my head. Now though, I feel like I have to try. I could just talk to her, just for a minute, and see how things go. I mean, I’ll know right away if she likes me and all, won’t I?
I turn left off the stairs and go down a short hall into the den. There aren’t many people in here, it looks like a lot of them have taken off, and most of the rest are upstairs. I don’t recognize anyone here either...
Except Eva.
She is standing immediately to my left when I walk into the room. Before I can step back and not be seen, she turns to me and smiles–smiles really broadly–and says, “You’re Pete’s friend, right... You’re... Jess?”
I’m so taken aback by her remembering my name that I nearly drop my beer. “Ye... yeah, Jesse,” I stammer, talking a step closer to her. “And you’re Eva.”
She nods, still smiling. “Yep, and this,” she says, gesturing to the rest of the room, “is my bedroom. Do you like it?”
I glance around. Of course I like it. If keeping her talking to me involved getting kicked in the nuts, I would probably like it. There is a futon in the back of the room, and a couch in the center, which is facing a television on a music video station with the sound off. The steady thump of the techno that replaced the New Wave shakes the ceiling. There are a guy and a girl sitting on the couch that I wish to God weren’t there. “Yeah,” I say, sipping my beer. “It’s really nice.”
“Great,” she says. This girl is so drunk. It probably would be wrong for me to try anything with her. That would be horrible, but there is no way she would like me normally, not this beauty queen. One of the jock guys upstairs was probably waiting for her to get this drunk so he could take advantage of her too. I wouldn’t fuck her over though, I wouldn’t screw her and forget about her. I would still want to see her in the morning. I would want to be with her.
Of course, I can’t. I can’t be with anyone, not for long. If I did anything with her, it would be just as bad as one of those jock guys upstairs.
“Let’s sit down,” she says, grabbing my hand and pointing to the couch as the guy and the girl vacate it. She pulls me toward it and I can’t help but follow. When we are seated, she says, “So where do you know Pete from?”
He already told her this, didn’t he? “Oh, we went to school together. I’ve know him since we were little kids.” She is sitting so close to me.
“So you live around here?” Her arm is pressed against mine.
“Yeah, I live in the city. Actually, I work at the Myer Road Bar not too far from here.”
“Oh!” she cries out. “I know that place. We used to go there in high school, because they would serve anyone.”
I nod. “Yeah, the owner has gotten in trouble for that. It’s run by his brother now, so we are mostly on the level.”
“Mostly?” she asks.
“I still occasionally judge people by their looks,” I say. “Sometimes I judge wrong. I haven’t gotten in trouble for it yet, though.”
“Yet,” she says with a laugh, throwing her head back as she does so.
I can’t help but kiss her. To my surprise, she doesn’t fight against me in the least, even pushing me back and taking control of the situation. She jams her tongue into my mouth and shoves me down on the couch, clawing at my chest. For a moment, I’m too stunned to react. I can hardly believe that a simple moment of weakness actually paid off. She straddles me, and I can feel the warmth of her groin against mine.
Suddenly, she stops. As she gets off me, I’m sure she’s realized what has happened, and now I will never get to see her again. Why would she want to kiss me? I don’t even look at her as she walks away, not until I hear the door close and lock. I sit up and look over at her as she is coming over to me. She is pulling off her sweater and tossing it on the floor. “Come here," she says, going to the futon. When I follow orders, she grabs me and starts kissing me again. She is as tall as I am and I don’t have to stoop to do it. She pulls me down onto the bed and we fumble with each other’s clothes.
The sex is swift and awkward, but Eva seems to enjoy it. When it’s over, she falls asleep quickly, pressed against me. I lie wide awake in the dim light of her bedroom, listening to the sounds of the fading party above us and the hum of the television. I think about me. I think about her. I don’t want to care about it. I don’t want to care about her. I don’t want to care about any of them. What have they done to even deserve it?
I lay there for along time before I extricate myself from under Eva. When I pull a blanket over her, she doesn’t show any signs of stirring, so I seek out my clothes and get dressed.
Pete is on the couch, talking to some guy I don’t recognize as I come upstairs. “Hey!” he calls out. “I was just about to leave without you. Where have you been?” When I don’t answer, he says, “Oh... Right on!” He gets up and comes over to give me a high-five, but I don’t respond.
“I’m wicked tired,” I say. “Let’s just get out of here.”
I’m fairly quiet on the way home, pretending to doze in an effort to ignore Pete’s suggestive questions. When he pulls up in front of my apartment, I don’t even say goodbye.
My apartment is dark and smells musty. I really wish someone was here right now, gun in hand, waiting to kill me. It would make things so much simpler. The rest of the world could get on with their lives and stop worrying about me. I’m sick of all of it. I’m sick of the responsibility. I’m sick of hearing about how much I’m supposed to care about people, when I don’t.
I run to the bathroom and vomit. It’s long and hard, and I sit there, staring down at the pool for a long time, sobbing. After a while, I get up, wash off my puke-splattered face and go to bed.
Go to Chapter 30
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