This is the Way the World Ends (6 page)

Sensations of peace and contentment continued to flow from the specter to George. ‘This is a service business,’ he said. ‘The product comes second. We must be as sensitive as any funeral parlor director – it’s amazing what people have on their minds when they come in here. The idea is to make the customer feel good about his choice, even if it’s the cheapest.’

‘You’re skillful at that.’ Nadine went to an electric heater and began massaging the winter out of her finger bones.

‘No memorial will take away grief, ma’am, but it can help.’ George had not drawn such pleasure from the sheer act of talking since he was three. ‘I’ll tell you what gets me upset, though. It’s when people buy, er, you know’ – what to call them? – ‘guilt stones.’ (That sounded right.) ‘I’m thinking of . . . well, I won’t say his name, but he treated that kid of his like junk. And then, after the boy drowns, what does this guy do? Has us order a four thousand dollar model of the Taj Mahal.’

‘I must give you your task,’ said Nadine. ‘An ordinary commission – not a guilt stone. I need an epitaph, and something to put it on.’

‘Is this a pre-need?’ he asked.

‘A what?’

‘Do you want the stone for yourself?’

‘No. Some people very close to me are dying . . . my parents.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Good God – how old were her parents?

‘The stone must endure,’ she said.

‘We carry the best bonded granites.’

‘I fancy this material.’ Nadine caressed the South African sample, which was polished to a mirror brilliance. ‘I can see my face in it.’

‘Our stones have extreme density – they can take the most detailed carving. Also low porosity – no moisture gets inside, ever. The guarantee is unconditional, valid to you, your heirs, and your assignees. If a crack appears, even a hairline, you get a new monument, free.’

‘I have no heirs or assignees. My real concern is the epitaph. I want . . . eloquence.’

‘Eloquence?’ said George lightly. ‘Really? But why, ma’am? I mean, it’s not like it’s going to be carved in
stone
or anything . . . That’s a little joke we have around here.’ He reached into the shelves above his work table and pulled out a plastic binder containing twenty sample epitaphs, typed, double spaced. It began with Number One,
IN OUR HEARTS YOU LIVE FOREVER,
followed by
ASLEEP IN THE ARMS OF JESUS
, then
I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE
, all the way through Number Twenty,
GOD IS LOVE
. He handed the epitaphs to the old woman, who studied them with pursed lips.

‘No, no,’ she insisted, tapping the paper. ‘There’s no honesty here. I want
you
to write it.’

‘I don’t write epitaphs, ma’am, I inscribe them.’

‘Show me how,’ said Nadine, lifting the utility knife off the work table.

As George took the knife from her, her thumb strayed across the blade. At first he thought she was unharmed – but no, her ancient flesh had split. Violently he sucked in a mouthful of air, and then she expirated with equal vigor. For several seconds they continued to co-breathe in this manner, George neglecting to exhale, Nadine to inhale.

The old woman’s blood was black. Black as her eyes. Black as South African granite. It had a sulphurous smell.

‘Would you like a bandage?’ he asked.

‘Please.’ She sucked her thumb.

His nervous fingers returned to the shelves where the epitaphs were kept and procured a tin box. He punished himself by biting his inner cheeks. Way to go, George. Always be sure to draw blood – best way to firm up a sale.

Ripping the tabs from the bandage, Nadine wrapped it around her black, burning wound.

A rubber stencil spanned George’s work table. He sliced some final touches into the inscription.
IN LOVING MEMORY OF GRACE LOQUATCH . . . THE HAMMER GROWS SILENT
. Grace Loquatch’s birth and death dates followed. She had been a carpenter. The epitaph was her sister’s inspiration.

Black blood? What awful disease had Mrs Covington contracted?

He affixed the stencil to Grace Loquatch’s monument, Design No. 4306 on Vermont blue-gray. Using a hoist-and-chain he transported it across the shop, a job that if necessary he could have accomplished with his bare hands. Grace Loquatch’s immortality moved past three droning electric heaters, the mounted pencil drafts awaiting customer approval, and several shipping crates filled with uninscribed stones from the great quarries of Canada and Vermont.

‘Then we have your self-hatred stones,’ he said. (Self-hatred stones? Yes, that wasn’t a bad term for them.) ‘The customer uses them to take revenge on himself for never having gotten around to being alive, know what I’m saying? Yesterday we buried . . . a woman. She came here as soon as the doctor told her about the lung tumors. “For once I want to do something really nice for myself,” she said. So we worked up this special thing, all sorts of flowers and birds. Angels. Job took twice as long as usual, but I didn’t want to charge extra, she had enough problems. I brought the pencil draft into her hospital room. She said, “It’s beautiful.” Then she said, “I don’t deserve it.” ’

George maneuvered the stone inside the chamber of the ABC Electric Automatic Sandblaster, closed the door, and turned on the motor. Sharp splinters of noise filled the air. Nadine watched in fascination as the jet of aluminum oxide gushed down the hose and spewed forth. The abrasive grains ricocheted off the rubber stencil; others slipped through the incisions, hitting the granite and biting deep. Corundum dust engulfed the stone like fog.

‘A person would not last long in there,’ Nadine observed after George shut the sandblaster down. ‘You’d be turned to bone.’

‘Unless you were wearing a scopas suit.’ He entered the chamber and peeled away the stencil. Now and forever the stone said,
GRACE LOQUATCH . . . THE HAMMER GROWS SILENT
. He ran his fingers along the excellent dry wounds.

‘You and I may be the only people in Wildgrove not wearing scopas suits, George.’

‘My wife and kid don’t have any either.’ He hauled the monument out of the chamber. ‘For some of us, seven thousand dollars is a lot of money. I sure wish Holly had a suit. She’s in nursery school.’

‘The Sunflower Nursery School,’ said Nadine. ‘I go over there sometimes. It’s my hobby, you might say – watching children play. Holly is very bright, isn’t she? And decent. Yesterday the class painted rocks. Holly helped the children who didn’t know how.’

‘Really? I wish I’d been there. Do you ever baby-sit, Mrs Covington?’

‘I would be happy and grateful to baby-sit for your daughter. Are you certain you want her to have a scopas suit?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’ll strike a bargain with you. Do this task – write an epitaph for my parents – and I’ll see to it that Holly gets a scopas suit, free of charge.’

‘Free?’

‘Free.’

‘I don’t even know your parents.’

‘Pretend they are your parents, not mine.’

‘My parents are dead.’

‘What does it say on their headstones?’

‘Nothing. Names and dates. I’m a Unitarian.’

‘What should it say?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Let’s begin with your mother.’

‘Huh?’

‘Your mother. What was she like?’

‘You want me to tell you about my mother?’

‘Please.’

‘My mother,’ George began. ‘Well . . . certainly my mother should have been happier. She was always running herself down, always trumpeting her faults – kind of an inverse boaster, I guess. She had diabetes, but I think it was the high standards that killed her.’ Had he been storing up these ideas, waiting for Mrs Covington’s questions? ‘I loved her very much. She was better than she knew, and—’

‘ “Better than she knew,” ’ Nadine intoned. ‘There, you’ve done it – that fits my mother exactly! “She was better than she knew.” I love it.’

‘For an
epitaph?
’

‘Let’s discuss your father.’

‘A simpler person than my mother. Very likely he was the most unselfish man on earth.’

‘Tell me more.’

‘I think of him as always smiling. He smiled even when he was unhappy. They should have paid him a lot of money for being so nice. His job was pointless. He never found out what he was doing here. His car didn’t run right.’

‘ “Never found out what he was doing here . . .’ My, my, that’s quite perfect – Dad is just like that. Your epitaph-writing talents are extraordinary, young man. You’ve earned that suit twice over. So, how much for the finished stone?’

‘Seven hundred and fifty dollars plus tax. We usually ask for half-payment down and the balance when your monument is ready.’

Nadine opened her handbag and drew out a roll of withered bills. ‘I don’t want change,’ she said, depositing nine hundred dollars in George’s palm. She squeezed his hand. Her skin was vital and warm, not at all the clammy membrane of a ghost. ‘And I don’t want a sales contract, either. We must trust each other.’

‘Come back on Monday and you can approve the pencil draft. We should select a lettering style now, though.’ I do trust her, George thought.

‘Any style you like will be fine. It’s the
message
that must be right. At the top, simply, “She was better than she knew.” ’

‘No name?’

‘I’ll know who’s buried there. At the bottom, “He never found out—” ’

‘ “He never found out what he was doing here.” ’

‘Precisely.’

‘What about dates?’

‘We needn’t trouble ourselves with dates.’

From her handbag Nadine produced a large, tattered map, unfolding it atop Grace Loquatch’s stone. George recognized the waterfront district of Boston – full color, fine detail, all the key buildings illustrated in overhead views. The paper was disintegrating along the creases. Entire warehouses had fallen into the holes.

‘This particular scopas suit store isn’t easy to find,’ she said. ‘And today your average cartographer doesn’t even bother with some of these little streets.’ She pointed to a vacant space on Moonburn Alley. ‘Here’s your destination – Theophilus Carter’s establishment, the Mad Tea Party he calls it. I’ll tell him to expect you this Saturday. Professor Carter is a tailor, a hatter, a furrier . . . an inventor. He makes extraordinary things for human bodies.’

She started to leave, paused, and scurried up to George, kissing him softly on the cheek. ‘I’m so pleased you’re the way you are,’ she whispered. ‘It was lovely talking with you.’

‘I enjoyed it too, ma’am, most assuredly.’

‘Fare thee well, George.’

‘Good-bye.’

On her way out of the shop, Nadine hesitated by the South African monument. ‘She was better than she knew,’ she mumbled, evidently projecting the words onto the granite. When the black gleam caught her eyes, George was certain he saw tears.

CHAPTER FOUR

In Which Our Hero Is Asked to Sign a Most Unusual Sales Contract

Saturday. The big day. George the small-town artisan had little affection for Boston, with its self-importance and its arrogantly unlabeled streets, their plan evidently derived from a fallen wad of spaghetti. He trusted that Mrs Covington’s map would see him through the worst of it.

‘I’m going to the waterfront today,’ he told Justine. Husband and wife were snuggled together, basking in the afterglow. The chatter of cartoon squirrels and the giggles of animated elves blared into the bedroom. Working in cosmopolitan and distant Los Angeles, were the creators of these virginal diversions, George wondered, aware of the enormous quantity of screwing that their products brought about in the hinterlands of Massachusetts? ‘There’s a new memorial on Snape’s Hill. Arthur asked me to check it out. We might order one for the showroom.’

One-third truth, two-thirds lie. The Snape’s Hill Burial Grounds had indeed erected a remarkable memorial that month, a replica of a prehistoric megalith commissioned by an eccentric young man named Nathan Brown for his recently departed and allegedly Druid uncle. Arthur had not asked George to look at it, however, and the Crippen Monument Works would almost certainly not be ordering one.

He kissed her. They had not used contraception. If a girl: Aubrey. If a boy: Derek. They had been taking the necessary lack of precautions for the last ten weeks. Everything would work out. He wanted another girl, had instructed his sperm accordingly. Aubrey Paxton.

‘Is Arthur paying you to run around like this?’ asked Justine sneeringly. ‘Can’t
he
look at the damn rock?’

‘He’s busy today.’

‘Busy hauling Scotch bottles. Busy lifting shot glasses. It’s supposed to snow, you know.’

‘It won’t snow that much.’

But it did snow that much. Even before George had gotten their terminal-case Volkswagen van to the end of Pond Road, the first storm of December was under way. The heater fan groaned and squeaked as it shunted inadequate amounts of warmth toward his frigid toes. The wiper motors dragged frozen rubber across the windshield. Flakes came down everywhere, a billion soft collisions a second.

He turned left onto Main Street, steered the skittish vehicle past the post office, the Lizard Lounge, and the Wildgrove Mall, home of Raining Cats and Dogs. (Damn you, Harry Sweetser. I hope one of your tarantulas bites you on the ass.) A happier sight now, Sandy’s Sandwich Shop, where on Tuesday and Thursday nights, while Justine learned to act, he and Holly shared a pizza and something he was not embarrassed to call conversation; it was a tribute to children that whatever you discussed with them seemed important. A mechanical horse stood outside the shop.
GIANT RIDE
, the sign said. 25
CENTS, QUARTERS ONLY. INSERT COIN HERE
. Holly always asked her daddy for an extra ride. The chances of her not getting one were equal to those of the sun not coming up the next day.

After the Arbor Road turn, the van rattled past John Frostig’s house. The Perpetual Security panel truck sat in the driveway, jam-packed with deterrence. George recalled his old fantasy of breaking into the truck and stealing a scopas suit for Holly. How wonderful it was not to be burdened with this temptation, to be bound instead for the Mad Tea Party and its free merchandise. Spying through the picture window, he saw little Nickie, clad in a scopas suit, watching TV. On the screen a mouse unleashed a bomb from a World War One fighter plane. As it detonated, a wave of well-being hit George.