The woman spent the afternoon assembling supplies to make a chocolate cake. She waited patiently for it to cool before she piped raspberry cream between the layers and at the base. She found a box that would fit the cake and tore out the pages of five of her favorite books, running them through the shredder to make a nest for the cake to travel on. Discovering she was out of pastry cream, she wrote THANKS on an empty paper towel roll and affixed it to the frosting. By the time the postman picked it up the next morning, a fluid had condensed, leaving a sticky ring on the mailroom floor.
She began to have trouble sleeping. A postal tube arrived and she opened it to release eight disoriented white mice. They tumbled out in a line and scrambled for safety. She gave them water and sliced up an apple but was confused by their presence until later that evening when, save for one, they seized and made tiny bowel movements that respectively produced alphabet beads T H A N K O and U. The last mouse was uncomfortably constipated in a life-threatening way until she took him to the vet and had the Y extracted at the expense of forty-five dollars.
A fever gripped the woman and she was bound to her bed for a week. When she could walk again, she set immediately to work. She mixed industrial buckets of yellow lye, loaded them up after dark, and drove to the park, which featured swings for children and a community garden and a broad green lawn.
In the morning she set up an old VCR to record the news and drank coffee while she rebandaged her chemical burns. They came in live from the grassy field. There was a clip of the landscape men being piled into the back of a police truck, one of them crying. There was a good live shot of the THANKS on the grass still smoking comically from burned patches. There was talk of reevaluating local law enforcement, of adding cameras. She popped the tape in the mail that afternoon.
The following week, the woman opened her door to find a baby boy in a basket. The infant was too small to speak but the woman knew exactly what he would say when he did.
Legacy
Keepers here are required to do more than trim and water the plots, make a note of sinking or cracking, seed bare patches, feed the peacocks, and feed the cats. This is the last piece of luxury property most people ever own apart from acquisitions in the afterlife, and so there’re a few special things we do to make the investment worth it. The slings and trappings all find their way here. We know how to treat such matters with respect.
You’ll recall the pharaohs were entombed with whatever they wanted to hang on to: usually women and cats, pots of honey. These days, we might pour in a shipping crate of golf balls before nestling the linksman into the dimpled rough and covering him up with a soft layer of tees. We had a starlet request her casket be filled with vodka, the good stuff. We floated her in it like an olive and locked it down. She didn’t spring for watertight, though; for five months, the grass wouldn’t grow. We had to lay down plastic turf.
A tax man had a crate of mice scattered through his mourners so he could be entombed with the sense of panic he inspired. A ballet instructor wanted her students to pas de bourrée in the grave to tamp down the soil before she was placed. We got the girls out before their teacher was lowered in, but for a little extra, who knows — maybe we would have looked away, have one of them do a solo piece while we backed in the dirt.
There was the assistant, beloved by all on the lot next door, who was placed in a grave we left unmarked but for a stone bench so his boss could sit and yell Martin! Get on the fucking call! and similar for many glad hours. The studio even financed a granite letter tray. Every full moon, they say, a ghostly figure deposits three duplicates of a contract to be sent to Legal.
People ask about the rock stars. Are they all mix tapes and pinners? Is the crypt packed with roses? These are secrets we keep. We surround folks with what they put a lot of energy and effort into, a lot of value. It might be color wheels of gel acrylics, letters from old friends. A nice layer of cash. Every body of work deserves its spoils. When we keepers go, we’ll get maps and plans and cenotaphs in miniature, all housed deep under slabs bearing the names of every man, woman, and blue-faced baby we drew down, a towering monument to our work.
So come in, look around. Slip off your shoes, test the soil. Visit the peacocks and their dowdy hens. Take a seat under a tree and speculate to nobody in particular about exactly what, when your ship has sailed, you would like to take below deck. It might seem like a lonely afternoon there in the shade, but take heart; we’ll be listening.
The Man Ahead
A wrong turn threw Jim off the route. He took a slow circle around a dead end and headed back, falling in behind a line of cars. The man ahead took a right and Jim followed, seeking the highway. A jetting spray shot from the man’s windshield just as Jim’s finger stretched for the wipers and they worked in tandem again. Jim found he could focus and learn precisely what the man ahead was planning and copy him exactly with hardly a half-second delay. He followed close to confirm: indeed, he signaled early and drifted to the left just after the man ahead, who took a sip of coffee the instant Jim thought to lift his travel mug. They both half glanced at the highway as it slipped by. The man ahead moved to pass a bus, and though he could have made pace beside, Jim kept slightly behind. From these few one-sided exchanges, Jim was surprised to find the satisfaction that his life had found some small but valid purpose. The feeling was exhilarating.
After a brisk route past a long line of warehouses, the man ahead pulled into a parking lot. Jim parked in a spot behind and followed him into the building, where they each gave a cursory nod to the guard at the front desk. In the small elevator, Jim felt compelled to stand behind the man but very close, with his nose almost but not quite touching the man’s shoulder. They breathed together.
The maze of cubicles offered no obvious navigational clues, and Jim was relieved that the man ahead knew where to go. Trying to memorize the route by landmarks — a large printer on the right, a board pinned with blank pages, a glass-walled meeting room, a large printer on the left — proved too complex. Jim kept a brisk pace and they both came to a stop in front of a woman, who minimized a picture of a motorcycle.
“The meeting got pushed,” she said.
“Thank God,” said the man ahead. Jim said, “Thank God.”
The woman frowned at Jim and returned her attention to the man. “You’ll have a little extra time to work on the deck. Did you swap out the copy I sent?”
“On the first page, yeah,” said the man ahead, and Jim, starting “On” when the man had gotten to “first,” made a quick repeat.
“You have a shadow today,” the woman said.
The man made a move to turn — stiffly, as if he had a sore neck — and shrugged without comment.
“We really need this done in an hour,” she said. “I owe you one.”
“I’ll get you something soon,” he said, and “—soon” echoed.
Work went quickly; surprising for the fact that without a chair or desk of his own, Jim was forced to squat and pantomime the actions of keyboard and mouse. He found strength in his quadriceps and a real sense of humor about the situation. The monochrome details of his own morning and afternoon had been replaced entirely by this man’s desires and obligations. At lunch, they ate a tuna salad sandwich, Jim’s in pantomime but with no less appreciation for the atmosphere of the lunch hour. There was a communal depression in the lunchroom, but Jim was not affected by it; rather, he experienced a feeling akin to walking past an old mattress leaning against a building. He was a tourist here and would move on soon to other scenic spots.