Dead End Job (12 page)

“Oh, thankie thankie, my lovely!” I said, with real enthusiasm and muffin crumbs dribbling down my face onto my boobs. “I’ll be about fifteen minutes, why don’t you come upstairs, park it on my bed and watch some
Real Housewife
reruns.”

“No problem. Hey there big buddy! ” He said to Winston, when we got up to my room. The dog completely ignored him, but nonetheless Martin leaned down and gave him an absent-minded pat on the head, then sighed and sank down onto my bed, pulling the covers up over his belly and nestling down into my pillows. “Your room is cute, Bitch.” he said, taking in the black and white damask rug, my vanity table and the large black-and-white framed pictures of friends, family and experiences that I had smattered across my grey-blue painted walls. I went back to the bathroom, where I finished drying my hair and putting on my makeup, then slipped the dress over my head and walked back in to show him the final result.

“How do I look?” I asked as I did a little spin.

“I freaking love that outfit” He said, completely on cue. “You look totally hot.”

I was ashamed of myself for being so petty and ridiculous, but I had spent the evening before obsessing over what I was going to wear to this damn funeral. I knew there was a great possibility of running into Rocky, so the funeral outfit needed to be perfect: somber but sexy, practical but appealing. After much thought I had decided to recycle the black H&M dress that I had worn to my disaster date with Jonah, and paired it with delicate black floral hose and jade green round toe pumps with a four-inch heel, topping the outfit off with a long strand of faux pearls with matching earrings. I was probably more than a little bit delusional, but to me the look kind of read “size ten Jackie O., in mourning for JFK.” Very chic.

“Do you have a coat?” Martin asked. “It’s a little cold outside.” 

“None that would match this dress. You don’t think the funeral will be held outside, do you?” 

“I know you want to be a symbol of funeral haute couture and all, but I think you should bring a coat anyways.”

“Oh, I think I’ll be fine, I’m sure it’s inside, right?” I assured myself. I really didn’t want to put an ugly coat over my cute dress.

When we arrived at the funeral a large group of mourners were standing outside in the cemetery. We cruised around the parking lot for a spot, and I looked around in vain for the warm, cozy synagogue where I was sure the ceremony would take place. There was no synagogue in sight, just a sweeping lawn with a large white tent about a quarter of a mile away on top of a grassy, muddy hill. This was going to be an outdoor event; plus, I didn’t see Rocky’s police car in the lot. Fail and fail. I swore under my breath as we parked.

“Are you sure we have to go to this?” I whined at Martin.

“Um, yes bitch. You worked with the woman,” Martin scolded me. I knew he was right, but I was still feeling numb about the whole thing. I had liked Sarah well enough…yes she was annoying, and I hated her Pollyanna attitude about everything “Merit,” but overall she was a very nice person. I wasn’t sure why her murder hadn’t really impacted me emotionally yet. I hadn’t known anyone who’d been killed before Sarah, but even so—usually when tragedy struck I wasn’t such a cold bitch. In my everyday life, I was a big time crier. For Christ’s sake, I sobbed my ass off during
Lifetime
movies. I’d cried, yes, but I had to admit, it was much more to do with my own traumatic experience at the police station then sadness about Sarah’s untimely demise. My lack of emotional response to Sarah’s passing was downright weird. The only conclusion that I could make was that I was still probably a little bit in denial and a lot bit in shock.

I was freezing my ass off, but Martin looked both warm and smug in his oversized black raincoat and red scarf. We got out of the car and started trudging over to the group, who were quietly convening in the lawn, close to the white tent under which was the rabbi, Sarah’s husband Ben and her two kids were all standing. There were a few rows of folding chairs under the tent in which sat an older couple who I guessed was Sarah’s family from Colorado, and some other middle aged men and women, probably Sarah’s siblings and other family members. The rest of the group, largely composed of Merit employees (Sarah didn’t have much of a life outside of work), was left standing out in the rain. I didn’t blame Sarah’s family for the lack of accommodation: I assumed many of the funeral-goers were not really there to mourn Sarah’s passing, but rather to show their faces to the top tiers of Merit management and further their corporate ambitions or simply to gawk at the spectacle and gather gossip for the weekly water cooler session on Monday morning.

In addition to foregoing a coat, which I now greatly regretted, I had also skipped putting on my glasses, so in conjunction with the disadvantage of height due to my pointy heels sinking into the soft grass with each step, I couldn’t exactly distinguish the faces of anyone more than fifteen feet in front of me.  Although I was sure that I was getting soaked and my perfectly blown out hair was frizzing with each minute, I would have been just fine to stand in the very back of the crowd and slip away as soon as the ceremony was over. Unfortunately for me, that was not fine with Martin.

“Oh, no, no, no! This is some serious bullshit,” he huffed, as we arrived at the back edge of the group. He grabbed my hand and pushed and prodded his way right up to the front of the crowd, dragging me along with him, until we were standing at the foot of the tent, directly facing Sarah’s family and the rabbi. When we came to a stop, I practically ran into Elaine, who was standing right up front with Mr. Curtis and several of the other business leaders and executives, whom I vaguely recognized from my office wanderings. Elaine spotted me and pounced, immediately grabbing my two hands in hers.

“Ahhh Louisa! Isn’t it horrible!” she wailed, except her accent made it sound more like “Isn’t et hahhhrible!”

It was quite cynical of me, but I couldn’t help thinking that the performance was complete nonsense. I knew and she knew that she was putting on a show. Even though Sarah was her direct employee for many years, Elaine had not expressed any sentiment of sadness at the office to anyone, and here she was crying and carrying on in front of all of her peers. I tried to hold back a snort of disgust, and it came out more of a cough. Elaine must have taken this as a sign of my agreement, because she dropped my hands and started to make a big show of patting me on the shoulder. I noticed that Martin had disappeared and so had my easy out, so I nodded and let her pat me awkwardly.

After a few minutes of this I decided that I would try to scoot away and quietly get out of there before the ceremony began. Right at the very moment I was about to make my escape, the rabbi began the ceremony. I looked behind me to try to see an exit row, but Ari and a few of the other employees in our group had spotted Elaine and me and were standing directly in my way.

The rabbi started reading several prayers, some in English and some in Hebrew. I faked it pretty adequately and was even able to spit out the appropriate “amen” when the rest of the crowd did. After fifteen minutes of or so of wild emotional swings between boredom and anxiety, desperately wanting to leave, and completely freezing my ass off, Sarah’s casket was lowered into the ground by several Jewish men in yarmulkes.

When it reached the bottom of the grave with a loud unceremonious “thump,” I turned around to leave, but realized that the service wasn’t over as Sarah’s husband and sons got up slowly and approached a large pile of loose dirt on the ground. Lovingly, each person took a handful and tossed it on top of the casket. They then walked around to the back of the grave and the rest of the mourners in the seats got up and slowly, in a line, approached the dirt and performed the same ritual of throwing a handful on the coffin.

Although I found the idea of personally covering someone’s casket with dirt to be particularly morbid, I had to admit that there was something strikingly beautiful about the tradition. For just a moment I was taken from the prison of my own anxiety and able to feel a powerful rush of genuine sadness and empathy for Sarah and her friends and family. I felt my eyes brim up with hot tears as I watched her husband lovingly whisper a message or prayer as he said his final goodbyes to his wife. I completely forgotten myself, and choked back real sobs as each person from Sarah’s family was taking a their own small moment, most in tears themselves, as they approached the casket and sprinkled Sarah’s coffin with dirt, but these precious seconds of relief ended all too soon.

After the seated mourners finished, the rest of the standing group was directed by the rabbi to form a line and participate in the tradition, which he explained to us was an important
mitzvah
, or commandment, something that God demands of his people. As my group slowly made our way over to the line, I suddenly saw Ari appear from behind me in the crowd. I was trying to greet him, but there were so many people instead I found myself mushed between Ari and Elaine, who were both very somber and ignoring each other and me. It wasn’t a great moment to chat.

We slowly approached the casket, and the next thing I knew, Elaine, in front of me, was walking up to the pile of dirt. As if on cue, she began dramatically and loudly crying, wiping tears from her eyes and mumbling something to herself. The scene was so entirely ridiculous that I found myself turning away from her and looking over to the right to the group that had already done their
mitzvah
, hoping to find Martin so I could roll my eyes.

In the second that it took me to shift my eyes from the front of me to the side, I heard loud yelling and a commotion from where Elaine was standing. Ben, Sarah’s husband, had apparently leapt over the grave and was charging full speed in my direction. He was screaming at the top of his voice.

“IT WAS YOU! You PRICK! You sonofabitch! It wasn’t enough for you to just ruin my family, NO! You had to KILL MY WIFE!!”

What the hell? He, and everyone else at the service were staring straight right at me. I was completely bewildered.

“No,” I started to say, “you’re confused…”

At that instant, I was given a big shove from behind. Ari was trying to get me out of the way, but it was too late—Ben wasn’t coming for me, he was coming for Ari.

Ari’s push had caused me to lose footing and teeter on the muddy ground, and I started to fall forward and to the left at the same moment that Ben reached us. His hand swung up to hit Ari at the same moment that I fell. His fist and my face collided. I heard a crack that sounded like a semi-truck demolishing a building stocked with gas cans. A searing pain instantly spread through my left eye, then my entire head was engulfed the same sharp pain, which suddenly blinded me like a bright, white light. The force of the blow caused my free fall to change direction, and I splatted backwards to the ground on my ass with a thud. Unfortunately, the force of the strike also caused Ben to stumble, and he landed directly on top of me in a big, muddy pile.

I tried to push Ben off of me, but he was as stunned and confused as I was. While he was being lifted off of me by several pairs of hands, I glanced to my right and noticed that Ari had taken the confusion as an opportunity to get the hell out of there. The last I saw of him, he was jogging down the hill through the rain to the parking lot. I looked up and saw that Ben was being walked over to the corner by the rabbi, while his mother was trying to shoo the two children away from the scene.

“Oh man, Louisa, that looks like it’s going to be quite the shiner,” said a familiar voice.
              Two large, strong hands wrapped around my waist from behind, and I was gently but firmly lifted out of the mud and up onto my feet. When I turned around Rocky still had his hands loosely around my waist in an awkward embrace.

“How bad is it?” I asked him, forcing myself to move my hand off of my eye and show him the damage. He put his right hand under my chin and tilted my face up, studying the damage.

“It’s going to be a pretty nasty bruise, but I think you’ll live.” He smiled at me. I smiled back, embarrassed but beaming. I was so grateful and excited to see Rocky that even though I had just been involved in a funeral brawl, I couldn’t really think of anything else at the moment besides how good it would be to fall right into his arms.

This was the first time I’d seen him out of uniform and he looked fantastic. He was wearing a dark grey, perfectly tailored suit with a lighter grey buttoned up shirt and a black tie with a grey embroidered design. His face was freshly shaven, and I was close enough to him to smell that familiar cologne that he wore. His brown eyes were burning into mine. Our faces were only inches away. My face moved slightly towards his, almost involuntarily. I swear he was leaning in to kiss me…

But then he abruptly pulled away, looking right past my head. I turned around just in time to see that we were being approached very quickly by a very aggressive-looking Detective Lopez.

She gave me a quick once-over and then turned to Rocky. “Sergeant Evans, a word?” Although the request was formal, I detected a fair amount of incredulousness in her voice. I guess it on-the-job flirting was frowned upon in the SPD. Rocky’s arms dropped away from my waist immediately.

“Uh, sure thing, Rachel,” he replied, flushed. “Louisa, I’ll talk to you later. You should go straight home and put a steak on that eye.”

I nodded, and it took me a minute to realize that they were both waiting for me to leave. The whole interaction made me feel a bit strange, and a little hurt—like Rocky was embarrassed that he had been talking to me. I forced myself to brush it off, giving myself a short but effective lecture:
someone was murdered. Get the fuck over yourself.

Over in the corner of the tent, Ben stood with his mother and Detective Wang.  Next to him, Detective Schreck spoke with the rabbi. Apparently, if I had been wearing my glasses I would have seen that all of the detectives from Sarah’s case had shown up. With Ben’s outburst and accusation, it seemed to be well worth the effort.