Part 35 (1/2)

”As I'd imagined might happen, at the funeral there was a great emotional outpouring. The mother was beside herself. The father had become almost violently inconsolable. One of the brothers threw himself against the casket weeping, and one of the sisters became hysterical, insisting it was impossible-insisting that her brother wasn't in the casket, that this was a terrible dream or a mistake, and this got the whole family and even some of the young man's motorcycle gang friends making similar outcries. A fight nearly broke out before the father pushed his other son away and flung open the coffin.

”Perry, Professor, let me tell you that if I'd had that coffin locked or sealed-or, if I hadn't and that young man had been in there in the condition the county morgue had delivered him to me-well, this is the reason I always insist on reconstruction if I am going to have a body in a casket at Dientz Funeral Parlor.

”Because of the reconstruction, the family and the young man's friends were able to gather around his casket and grieve properly. He was the young man they remembered. He was dressed in a decent suit. His hair was combed, and I'd remodeled what I could of his face based on the photograph they'd run in the newspaper.

”Nothing, nothing, makes a death as believable as being able to see, to touch, the loved one's body. We are physical creatures, Perry, Professor.” He nodded at Professor Polson. ”And although much has been done to ridicule and malign the 'death industry' in America, I can tell you from experience that there is tremendous comfort taken in being able to view a body, in repose, nicely dressed, tastefully remodeled, eyes closed, clearly at peace. And I make it my job to be able to offer that comfort to those who may not know, until the very last moments, that they will need it.”

”But Nicole's family?” Professor Polson asked.

Mr. Dientz shook his head. ”No,” he said. ”Nicole's family couldn't bear it.” He shrugged, as if to say, you win some, you lose some. ”Now,” he said. ”The photos!”

Mr. Dientz whirled around in his chair with a flourish fit for the unveiling of the Mona Lisa. He waved his hand over his keyboard, took up his mouse, and then clicked a file in the center that read, NWERNER, and then JPEG10, and in less than half a second an image opened and filled the screen, and before Perry even realized that he had seen it, he was scrambling out of his velvet chair and across the room with a hand over his mouth, and then out of the office and into the men's room near the entrance of the funeral home.

86.

”Craig,” Perry had said when he left for Bad Axe with Professor Polson. ”Just stay here, okay? We'll be back late. Don't do anything stupid.”

”Like what?” Craig had asked, forcing Perry to say it: ”Like going out looking for Nicole.”

Craig had tried not to. He'd paced around the apartment. Turned the TV on and off. He'd eaten a salami sandwich. Taken his second shower of the day. Gotten in bed. Gotten out of bed, combed his hair and gone next door to knock on Deb's door, but there'd been no answer. Finally, he'd sat down next to the phone and willed it to ring, and, incredibly, it had: ”h.e.l.lo?”

On the other end of the line, there was no sound.

Craig held the receiver closer to his ear, and said h.e.l.lo again.

Now he could hear something. It was very distant, maybe the sound of a car on a freeway. Maybe, very faintly, there was music playing on the car radio. Or maybe he was just hearing his own heartbeat.

”h.e.l.lo?” he asked again. And then: ”Nicole?”

Then the line went dead, and Craig stood up, grabbed his coat, and headed out to do the stupid thing Perry had told him not to do.

It was colder out than Craig had expected it to be. The snow fell in fat flakes that stuck to the sidewalks and to the roofs and winds.h.i.+elds of the cars parked beside the curbs, although the traffic was churning it into a slick, wet shadow in the road.

It seemed to Craig that the streets and sidewalks were oddly thronged with students. Had he simply not been outside enough this fall to notice them, or were they out, for some reason, en ma.s.se?

As they pa.s.sed him-walking two or three abreast on the sidewalk and in the streets and at the corners, it felt to Craig as if he knew all of these kids, or had at least seen them all before. They were whooping, slapping each other's backs, pretending to be arguing, telling jokes. Couples were holding hands. Girls had their arms slung around each other's shoulders. Everyone seemed happy. No one was dressed for the cold or even seemed to be noticing it, and Craig was painfully, completely, aware of how separated he was from the lives of his peers. He was like a ghost come back to haunt the scene of his last days. No one seemed to notice him at all.

He remembered that life, and what it had been like to be a part of it. He remembered Lucas with a flask in his back pocket, stumbling off to the fourth bar of the night, and Perry, disapproving, walking a few steps ahead of them. He remembered how they'd stopped to shout something stupid up to the Omega Theta Tau house. Something about f.u.c.king virgins.

He remembered loving it.

How dumb and wonderful he had felt.

He remembered that a girl had come out on the porch, and that she was all lit up from behind. Even from that distance he could see how beautiful she was.

He had loved being a stupid, drunk college kid. An a.s.shole shouting up at a sorority house. He loved the girl standing there, looking down at them, and the house, and the sense that, inside the house and behind that girl, some solemn ceremony was taking place in candlelight. Chanting. Holding hands. He'd loved that there would be such a house, such a secret society of beautiful girls, and that he was outside of it, shouting obscenities at it, being a real jerk-an oaf-while a big equally stupid moon was hung over it all, and he was fumbling for the flask in Lucas's back pocket as Perry walked off without them.

But this was all before Nicole. Before she joined this sorority. Before all of it.

Now he was pa.s.sing the first of the terrible landmarks. The stone bench beneath the weeping willow where he'd slipped the amber ring on her finger, and where she'd given him the poem he still kept in his wallet: Time may take us far apart, But you will always be the lover of my heart.

I have not given you my body yet.

But I have given you, forever, What I Am He stopped, looked at the bench, at the layer of snow acc.u.mulating on it, and he was so cold, shaking so hard, that if he hadn't had his jacket zipped, it would have rattled off of him, he thought. He blew a long scarf of frosted breath into the air above the bench before he continued to walk, and he didn't look up again until he'd gotten to the spot where, on Greek Row, you could see the hill from which the brooding Omega Theta Tau house looked down.

How had it gotten so dark so fast?

How long had he been walking?

Craig looked from the house to the sky, where a big blank moon was hanging, and then he looked toward the house again, where, in the light of that moon he saw two dark-haired girls walking down the front steps in puffy winter coats but very short skirts, knee-high boots.

They were still far away, but he could see that they were laughing, tossing s.h.a.ggy wool scarves over their shoulders as they emerged through a scrim of snow.

He took a few steps toward them. They hadn't noticed him, but they were heading in his direction. When they were less than a block away, Craig rubbed his eyes to be sure, but now he had no doubt: One of them was Josie.

Craig would have recognized that black silk hair, that pointed chin, anywhere. He could even hear her familiar laughter as she got closer. That high, sharp cackle. ”Oh, my G.o.d!” she was saying. ”You are totally kidding me. Tell me you're kidding.”

Craig continued to stand in the center of the sidewalk, watching. They were directly ahead of him, and so close now that their shadows, stretched ahead of them on the snowy sidewalk, nearly touched him, would soon envelope him.

Yes.

He knew without a doubt that the one on the left was Josie, but he had to rub his eyes and blink the snowflakes out of them several times, shake his head, before he could be sure of what he was sure of: That the second girl, the dark-haired one walking with Josie, was Nicole.

Nicole.

”Nicole,” he said.

She didn't hear him, and she hadn't seen him.

He stood where he was and watched her, taking all of her in. The way she walked and the corners of her mouth. The little folds at the edges of her eyes. The perfect little b.u.mp on the bridge of her nose.

The silky straight hair was dark now, like Josie's.

But the tilt of her head.