-M-
I ducked into the Cup 'o Joe Diner shaking out my umbrella and overcoat with a heavy sigh. The rain was fitting. And the diner, though a usual haunt, was a natural place to stop as it was halfway between the cemetery and my dad's house.
Dad's house. I supposed I should stop thinking of it as his house. It was now "the estate."
William Jacobs, dead at 75. A captain of global media and communications. A man who started as a cub reporter with the New York Ledger and parlayed his skill as a journalist and his prowess as a businessman into a global empire.
My elder sister had delivered his eulogy solemnly, but the words had sent me out from the cover of the grave-side canopy in search of a quiet place to laugh.
I loved Dad. He was not only a successful man but also a kind one. And all the long-faced pomp and circumstance would have had him rolling his eyes had he not been stiff as a board in an imposing black casket.
I hung up my coat and umbrella by the door, taking in the other patrons of the diner.
As usual, Joe, the owner, was behind the counter in his white apron and rolled-up shirt sleeves. Winter or summer, rain or shine, he always wore a short-brimmed white Panama hat with a floral band.
A few couples and families occupied booths by the windows where they could watch the rain.
Alone at the counter, dressed like me in funeral black, a youngish-looking man with dark hair stared at his hands atop the linoleum counter.
I took a stool two down from him and signaled Joe for my usual.
The young man was odd in that he had nothing in front of him, not even a glass of water. I looked at him as he seemed lost in thought.
"Excuse me," I said. But do we know each other?"
"What?" He asked.
"Sorry, you must have been miles away," I said, pushing a wet strand of my dark hair over my ear. I indicated his black suit and tie. "Were you at the funeral?"
Joe poured me a cup, noticing the young man as if for the first time.
"Oh," he said. "Where'd you come from?"
"I, uh..." The young man's hands trilled idly on the countertop. He watched me take a sip of my coffee. "What is that you're drinking?"
I paused mid-sip and swallowed. "I think it's Columbian," I smiled.
"Juan Valdez," Joe interjected.
The young man stared quizzically at the coffee. "I'll try some, that is if Mr. Valdez is passed caring."
I laughed as Joe set a cup in front of the handsome young stranger and poured.
"Cream and sugar are on the counter," Joe said, moving away.
The young man looked at the bowl of creamer cups and the sugar dispenser, then watched as I took a second sip from my cup.
He took a sip, making a face.
I laughed again. "Statistically, they say sociopaths prefer their coffee black. I suppose that's a mark in your favor?"
I passed him the sugar. He looked at it and poured, watching me sip. "What does that mean about you?" He asked.
I winced as the sugar continued pouring. "I'm a surgeon," I said. "And as a doctor, I think that's enough diabetes for one man, don't you think?"
He put the sugar back. He took a sip and cocked his head. "I don't think I like coffee," he said.
"Well, it's still $1.50," Joe piped up from his stool by the register.
"Two slices of apple pie, Joe?" I winked at the cute guy. "Can't have coffee without apple pie, right?"
The cute guy nodded.
Joe hopped up to cut two slices of apple pie from the case and put them under the warmer.
"Are you a 'cheese-on-top' guy or an 'a la mode' guy?"
"I'll have what you're having," he said, trying a creamer cup in his coffee.
"My father used to swear by the apple pie here," I said. "In fact, that's how my parents met. It was a terrible, no-good bad day, as Dad used to say. And it was raining like this. He walked into this diner, and all he wanted was a cup of coffee and a slice of apple pie with cheese on top. And just as he sat down, this girl at the counter ordered exactly what he was about to order but 'a la mode.' And it was the last slice of apple."
Joe served me my slice and passed one to the stranger in the black suit.
"Which is better?" He asked. "Cheese on top or a la mode?"
"I never chose sides," I smirked. "I just like plain apple pie."
Something about how he accepted the fork Joe offered him and how his eyes moved from the pie to me and then back to the pie, made me smile.
His eyes were pale blue. In fact, everything about him except his suit was in some way pale. Even his hair, though dark, was washed out somehow.
"Dad always described Mom as wearing this little blue suit with a little white collar with red piping on, and this little dark blue pill-box hat. He always choked up describing her and how she shared that slice of pie with him."
"How'd your mother describe him?" He asked, taking a tentative bite of the pie.
"Like a drowned kitten in a brown suit," I smiled. I found myself wiping my own eyes.
"Go on," the young man said.
"Only if you tell me what you think of the pie," I leaned back and sipped my coffee.
"I like pie."
I nodded. "Well then, they lived happily ever after," I smiled, sipping my coffee. "As proven by my humble existence."
He nodded. "That's the best part then, isn't it? Not the pie. Not the coffee. Who takes what in what way? It's the living happily, right?"
I nodded. "Well said. So, I'm Marley. What's your name?"
He made as if to answer me just as my wristwatch alarm chimed. I swore, digging into the recesses of my purse.
"Sorry," I smiled. "I've had a heart condition since I was four. Hey Joe, can I have a glass of water?"
-💀-
Of course, the details of William Jerome Jacobs's life had been truncated into various obituaries saying the same thing in every newspaper in the United States and most of the world three days before. I hadn't read them, but I knew the highlights.
I knew the highlights and lowlights of Bill Jacobs's life just as I had known the details of his wife Francis 17 years before.
I knew all the details about every human who had ever lived.
But sitting beside Bill Jacobs as he watched his own funeral service had been strange.
"This isn't happening," He'd said almost constantly from the moment I'd appeared to help him up from the bathroom floor five days previous.
"I'm afraid it is, Bill. On the bright side, you made it to 75. And you had more brushes with me than you'd care to acknowledge. Embedded in Desert Storm, a smoker from age 17 until you were 39. Drunken driving. Hanging a clock in your bathroom on a rickety ladder. A heart attack is rather mundane, but it's done."
"They checked my heart three months ago! I was fine."
I shrugged, watching his eldest daughter with her husband in the front row as the Vienna Boys' Choir sang "Fröhliche Weihnacht."
"This is a joke, right? I mean, you're not Death. You're some kid, an actress in a suit, hired by somebody from my frat days? I mean, at my 50th Reunion, we sent a casket to the class president's hotel room..."
I shook my head. "Bill..."
"There must be some mistake."
"Bill, stop trying to handle the situation and just accept it, okay?"
"I'm dreaming this. You're a dream."
"It's not a dream, Bill." I waited for the next stage; anger.
"But it can't be over! I am watching my cholesterol, speed-walking twice a day, I eat Kale, goddamnit!"
"Bill?"
"What?"
"Skip to the bartering bit?"
"NO! I'm not dead!"
(Ugh.) "We're at your funeral. Your body is pumped full of formaldehyde and stuffed in a casket. Nobody can see us or hear us, despite your bellowing at the top of your lungs. Doornails have better chances of returning to life."
"What if I gave more to charity?"
"You're done, Bill. Accept it. They flew in the Vienna Boys' Choir. Do you even speak German?"
"Do you?"
"Ich spreche jede Sprache. Und Hitler jammerte weniger."
"What was that?"
"Me, saying that 'I speak all languages' in German, numbnuts."
When his eldest daughter Susan took the pulpit, I noticed Bill rolling his eyes.
"What's wrong, Bill?"
"I would have preferred Marley," he sulked. "Don't get me wrong, Susan is a fine girl. But she's boring as un-buttered toast. Marley wouldn't stand on ceremony. She'd tell it from the heart, you know. Not burying the lead."
"What is the lead, Bill?"
"Oh, Fuck you! Just because I'm dead doesn't mean I can't argue with someone... No! SOME THING, that doesn't care!"
"People care, Bill."
"That's a dipshit answer! No! I refuse to die! At least not without someone beside me."
"I'm here, Bill."
"You?" His eyes drank me in. "No. You're not Fran. You're something else."
"I'm who you want to see, Bill.:
"Yeah, sure. But what are you, really? You're wearing a face and playing a part. But YOU! THE REAL YOU! Have you ever 'been?' Have you scraped a knee or bumped your head? Have you cried over up-turned cheerios? Fucked up? Made love? Held a newborn baby in your arms? Have you kissed someone and felt...?"
"Go on Bill."
"I need her! Not some stone-cold businessman with ice-water in his veins and ticker-tape running from his heart wearing her like a costume!"
"Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?"
"Plato," he said.
I nodded.
"I have heard the eternal footman hold my coat, and snicker," he said.
"T.S. Eliot," I nodded.
"Are you really here to help me through this?" He asked. "Or will you just put me in a column and add me to a total like a bead on some eternal abacus?"
I watched the slender figure of his youngest daughter rise from the end of the front pew and move down the outside aisle.
"See, even she's got the right idea," Bill sneered. "For all the pomp and circumstance, she knows it's hollow. Just as I know YOU are hollow. It's not about saying goodbye at the end. It's about how somebody lived. This funeral has all the passion of an autobahn society meeting. And if you're the angel of death, you're light on the 'angel' part."
"Alright, Bill. If you want to bail out now...?"
"Just tell me she's going to be okay?"
I considered. "I can't promise anything, Bill."
"No! You can promise me that. I want Marley to be more. To feel more. I want her to find love the way I did and find excitement with life the way I did. Well, not exactly the way I did, but... I want her to be happy. You know? Happy?! Or are you capable of feeling things like happiness? Sadness? Fool-hardiness? Pain? Rapture? To see someone and feel, not just a zing of attraction, but...."
"Yes, Bill?"
"Oh, look what I'm talking to. A cog in some infernal machine counting minutes, hours, years, eons but not feeling anything. I once felt delirious with joy, Buck-o. I set all care to the wind and danced like a leaf on the breeze with rapture!"
