The Recluse

How you handle the smell of a rotting corpse is: Smear a dab of VapoRub across your upper lip, under each nostril.  You can use the equivalent brand, but active ingredients are never quite as strong. The menthol will also help to block the high school biology lab stink of formaldehyde during the embalming process.  These are what you call tricks of the trade.

You might instead wear a surgical mask, to add a thin veil of comfort, and to protect those tender places where you eat and breathe. But I wouldn’t endorse it. Maybe the only thing worse than the smell of decaying human flesh is the taste of your own vomit hermetically sealed and sliming down the lower half of your face. 

My office is sort of yellowish brown. It is the color of good mustard. There’s a clock on the far wall, enclosed within a steel cage, and it is the only decoration. Were it not for the lingering bodies, you might think this was a small gymnasium.

After dark I usually talk to the night clerk, Gayle, because she is young and unprovoked. Gayle also moves and cleans the bodies. Tonight she is having coffee and dinner with a man from the ICU, and I have only the company of the departed.

The word autopsy is derived from the Greek for, ‘see for yourself’.  Most people experience difficulty getting that idea through their gut parts.   

I decide to work some, because I can’t figure another way to occupy time. And one case in particular I’m curious about. I fold up the white sheet only a few inches. All that’s left from her calf down is dry bones, blue-black and brown with what looks like a few brittle rags draped around. This is what’s called an extenuating circumstance. I reach for the clipboard.

“Janice Petrowski,” I say. Nobody is listening.

I tug at the cloth and send it to the floor. Her skin is sunken and blackish, like a compost heap, with a pile of stiff hair sprouting from the mush like bristles on a wire brush.  ”I see you’ve lost some weight,” I say. My words echo through still and sober artificial light. I imagine how Gayle would be laughing, holding her stomach and buckling over the sink. She really gets going sometimes.

The clipboard says a neighbor found Ms. Petrowski propped upright on the kitchen floor. The skeletal remains of two dogs were also found. I wonder about the mailman, whether it occurred to him that something might be off tilt. Would it not become impossible after many weeks to stuff new parcels into her mailbox? The electric and cable companies would have discontinued her service, but still there would be junk mail and catalogs and magazines. Wouldn’t these evetually pack full the little space inside a mailbox? It says nothing about this on the clipboard.

It’s difficult to tell whether Ms. Petrowski emits any sort of characteristic aromas. My nose is a casualty of my vocation; it is no longer to be trusted. Nor do I suppose an old farmer can smell cow shit on his front lawn.

The telephone rings, and I wipe my forehead on my sleeve. I pluck up the receiver and it’s Gayle on the other end. She speaks loudly. “Everything okay?”

I can hear voices in the background, and metal things clanking together. Gayle is laughing and telling someone to knock it off. “I’m on the phone,” she says.  There is noise like she is fumbling with the phone, and she continues to laugh without discipline. The man from the ICU is tickling her, pressing his fat fingers into her soft flesh. I would like to see this man on my shiny table.

Here’s a timesaving tip: when draining a body of fluids, apply firm pressure to the abdomen. Use the same techniques you would doing CPR, except the breathing part this time is unnecessary.

“I’m fine,” I say, cool as a green vegetable.

Gayle whispers about her date. Every little thing is going very well — she had smoked salmon, he had grouper — and would it be all right if she did not come into work tomorrow? I can’t think of anything to tell her, so I reluctantly consent. She says I’m the greatest, and then she hangs up quickly. I go back to work on Ms. Petrowski.

What’s remarkable is that her teeth are still gleaming and white, like she has been brushing and flossing all along. Suddenly it hits me that I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with her, whether to clean her up or just sort of dust around her, like an archeologist excavating a fossil.

I pluck off one of the gloves and squeeze at my temples. There is hotness between my finger and thumb, surging back and forth, pulsing with the beat of my heart, which is racing. I keep an aloe vera plant on the concrete windowsill, behind three squares of frosty basement glass. I break one of the limbs and peel back its green flesh. I rub the cool wetness in a circular pattern over my cheeks and forehead.

The man from the ICU is likely driving Gayle back to his apartment now. He is mentioning her beautiful eyes, the way they seem to glow under every passing street lamp and neon sign. His thumb is on the shift knob, fingers extending toward her left thigh. Surely he is saying and doing these things.

The telephone rings again, and the sudden loudness of it causes me to drop the aloe plant. It’s unusual; two calls this close together. I imagine it to be Gayle again. Something happened in the car, the man from the ICU made an obscene remark or gesture, and she became upset. She told him to stop the car, and despite her nice clothes, she got out and walked in the opposite direction. I’ll go to pick her up, and then I will find the man from the ICU — she’ll have his address — and I’ll knock around his lousy head awhile.

“Hello?” I say.

I’m ready with soft words and kind humor. I will play the consulate guy. There’s a quantity of sniffling on the other end, and then a man’s voice. “My wife… Susan… She… She passed.”

“I’m very sorry,” I say. 

There is great silence between us. I do not have proper words for this man, and I would like for Gayle to be here now. She would know what to say, how to properly sympathize. Finally the man tells me that his wife, Susan, had terminal cancer. The doctors said she would likely hang on for many months, but then she died very suddenly.

“Are you with the hospital?” he asks.

“We’re not affiliated,” I say.

It’s a common misconception among clients. You go to the hospital because you think it’s the only way. You pay through the nose, and the service will never equal the value of your dollars. Liken it to getting an oil change at Wal-Mart versus doing the job yourself. Do you really think some schlep getting paid minimum wage gives two sticks of gum about your car, whether he dumps in too much or not enough of the latest piss-brown Quaker State knockoff? These are not the kinds of people you ought to trust with your loved ones. The last thing you want is to be in the funeral home when poor Uncle Harry’s stitching comes loose. Or worse, if he’s still got some necrotic gasses shifting around in there.

The man apologizes for disturbing me at such an hour, but I assure him it’s not a problem.

“I need to know,” he says.

I tell him that I understand.

“Will you see her?” he asks.

“I’ll have a look,” I say. 

We arrange a time for him to come by — I pencil it into a notebook on Gayle’s desk — and then we say goodbye and then again I am alone. 

When the coroner pulled Ms. Petrowski away from the cabinet in her kitchen, she was stiff as petrified wood. Her bones dried and became as they are now, like old sticks. To get her flat enough to ride in the bag, they had to press simultaneously on her legs and torso. This explains why Janice Petrowski is resting in two separate pieces on my cold, steel table.

It’s no longer difficult, what I do. I might have experienced problems with it in the past, but that’s all gone now. I’m just a regular businessman, an independent contractor. Fact is, when somebody knocks on my door with big wet eyes and a fist full of cash, it’s hard to turn that away. I suppose I have a high tolerance for it. Anyway call it whatever you want. There’s somebody who turns into cash all the business you flush down the toilet, too.