Mortuaries and Martini Glasses

Calista stood at the edge of the grave and wished she were anywhere else as gusts of wind blew her hair into her face. The day was cold and grey, just like the heart of the boss whom they were burying.

The thought was uncharitable, Calista knew. But Markus Patterson had been a miserable human being. And it seemed like his last act on earth was going to be making them all stand at his graveside in gale-force winds and intermittent rain sprinkles while a pastor intoned Bible verses and spoke of eternal life. It just figured.

She reached up to tuck her hair behind her ears for the nine-hundredth time and shifted on her black high heels. Around her, others, from family members to former underlings and colleagues, were huddled around the marble plinth standing at the head of a small opening in the ground. Calista seriously doubted the old bastard had any friends.

The church service had been difficult to get through. A lot of pomp, circumstance and pretension. The eulogy, a fabric of lies and half-truths told to placate propriety and the mourning widow. At thirty-seven years younger than her husband, she managed to cry prettily as a model in the front row while occasionally clutching a silk handkerchief to her chest as though her heart were breaking. Calista hoped the inheritance the woman would receive could make up for paying with the last four years of her life.

Patterson’s three adult children, meanwhile, all sneered in her direction rather than pretend to grieve the death of their father. It was obvious there was no love lost between the family of Patterson’s youth and the third and final wife he’d married well into his old age.

Beside her, Kennedy, a beleaguered coworker, sniffled in the cold and pulled her blocky black trench coat tighter around her black formal business dress she was poured into. Calista figured there wasn’t enough warm sentiment in this entire crowd to make up for the chill in the air.

Another gust of wind whipped through the crowd, and the gaudy urn the twenty-five-year-old trophy wife picked out wobbled atop the plinth. When she’d first spied it, Calista had been left without words. Shaped something like a martini glass with a lid on it, it defied the laws of good taste, not to mention the principle of having a solid foundation. Thank God the thing was at least made opaque rather than clear. Staring at ashes and bone chips would have been just a shade too far.

“Marky would have loved it!” trophy wife had cooed about the God-awful thing during the wake. “It’s shaped like the glass his favorite drink came in!”

Undoubtedly, if Markus Patterson had had a body in that moment, it would have been turning over. As it was, this was just another in a likely long line of indignities death had visited upon the man who would have loathed that people could no longer assume he drank something sharp and straight like a whisky neat. No, knowing that Patterson was secretly a martini man was the first thing Calista could think of that she actually liked about the dead man.

He’d been a demanding and brutal figurehead of the company she worked for. Micromanaging details that didn’t matter and ignoring suggestions and opportunities unless they came from one of his sycophants. If she hadn’t needed the benefits the Fortune 500 company offered, she’d have quit within the first hour of working in the austere steel and glass high-rise. But she had needed the benefits. Still needed them, which was why she was here now, showing respect instead of spitting on the grave and dancing around it like she felt the alarming urge to.

At last, the pastor closed his Bible, and Calista fought off the urge to sigh with relief. But instead of bringing this farce to a close, he just drew in a deep breath and started extolling all of Patterson’s supposed merits. It sounded a lot like he was reading a list. The company’s donations and charitable works. The company’s advances in technology and making the world a cleaner, safer place. The company’s sponsorship of a scholarship for young inventors changing the world. All things that likely had very little to do with the company’s figurehead and more to do with the tax write-offs and public image for the company. Jesus. Did this guy go directly to the PR department for funeral service content?

Behind her, she thought she heard someone scoff quietly.

Obviously, she wasn’t the only one thinking these accolades couldn’t really be laid at Patterson’s feet.

“Oh my generous Marky!” the trophy wife whispered dramatically and swept the handkerchief up to daub at the corners of her eyes.

Then, just as Calista thought the moment couldn’t get any more theatrical and overdone if it were deliberate, a gust of wind whistled through the crowd again. The urn wobbled. Wobbled. And then to everyone’s utter astonishment, it tipped, colliding with the marble plinth it had been resting on and cracked open.

“Stop it!” the trophy wife called out, reaching as if in supplication toward the urn tipping in slow motion.

With a puff of released ashes, half the mass became a grey cloud swirling in the wind. A cloud that swirled directly up and into the face of the pastor who’d been drawing in a breath to continue his litany of the company’s good deeds. The man sucked up a deep lungful of the remains of Markus Patterson, then gave a coughing gag and froze, half bent over, one hand to his neck in horror.

Everyone, including Calista, stared in wide-eyed astonishment as the seconds passed. A few hands drifted toward mouths in the crowd as if covering the openings would prevent them too from breathing in earthly remains. But otherwise, silence reigned until the pastor gasped and proceeded to sneeze so hard he dropped the Bible.

The first crack in the collective stupor was a snort from Patterson’s oldest son, whose lips twitched furiously.  

As if the snort was the crack of a rifle, the trophy wife startled and lost control. Slowly, she looked up at the pastor, her face paling, then color slowly rising up her cheeks.

“YOU RUINED MY MOMENT!” she shrieked at the pastor and flew out of her seat with hands raised, fingers curled like talons.

The pastor stumbled backward a step, then fell on his bottom as the trophy wife’s four-inch heels got stuck in the damp turf, and she flew at him, falling forward.

She landed on her knees, her head only two inches from the pastor’s groin as the crowd watched in horrified fascination.

The pastor, meanwhile, labored through a fit and could do nothing but hack and sneeze over and over again.

A loud, pure cackle sounded over the sneezing. Patterson’s first ex-wife was laughing so hard she’d actually been silent until she could draw enough air into her lungs to give that mirth a voice. She was curled over, hands clutching her stomach in one of the chairs down the row from her children, as far from Patterson’s current wife as space allowed.

“Mom,” Patterson’s only daughter hissed quietly, leaning over her mother and looking slightly embarrassed.

“He-he-he al-always wanted,” the ex-wife gasped between laughs. “to-to live forever.” She swallowed down her laughter as best she could, but tears of merriment still trickled down her cheeks. With impressive restraint, she gulped down her laughter, lips continually tipping upward, unable to hold back a wicked smile.

And then she broke the stunned silence again, saying loud and clear, suppressed laughter coloring every word, “Do you think this counts as a form of reincarnation? Being sucked into the lungs of everyone at your funeral?”

What a horrifying thought! Calista’s hand flew up to cover her nose and mouth. Imagine breathing Markus Patterson’s ashes—or worse, essence—into her own body.

It started as a little tickle. Something her mind was sure was nothing more than her imagination. But she felt something scratch at the back of her throat. Calista gasped.

Then, reflexively, swallowed. Just as she thought she heard a voice that sounded suspiciously like Markus Patterson whisper, Good, on the now much gentler breeze.