A Date with Death

Benjamin Knechtel had a date on the last Friday of March with a beautiful older woman named Arlene. Ben wasn’t picky about who he went out with, charming women both younger and older than him, and he didn’t want anything serious. He went on three to four dates every week, which some might deem excessive, but he had no hobbies and six free hours every day after his shift ended, and at his age, a greying fifty-seven, he didn’t know how much longer the dates would keep coming. He still had his looks, and often likened himself to a Clooney or Brosnan, but between the ages of fifty-five and sixty, the aging process turned on the afterburners, and before long, he knew he would look in the mirror and no longer see a grey fox but a starved coyote.

Before the date, Ben attended a funeral. It was 4:00PM when he arrived at the Tara Village Senior Living Community. He set up chairs, wrestled with floral arrangements, and placed several foam-board photos of the deceased on easels. A fellow funeral assistant named Sarah, only twenty-three, dressed and pampered the deceased, which Ben was thankful for. He didn’t enjoy that part.

The guests, primarily comprised of other members’ of the retirement community and the deceased’s family, including her 5- and 8-year-old granddaughters, arrived promptly at 4:50 for a 5:00 service and mulled around in the entrance hallway. Ben and Sarah greeted them as they entered and helped the disoriented elderly find their seats. One woman, who must’ve witnessed the birth of Christ, broke wind interminably from the time she entered the building to the time Ben helped her into her seat. Her farts smelled like garbage, and the event hall already carried the overbearing scent of cigarette smoke and old people. The woman thanked him and gave him a $2 bill.

“Thank you.” Ben smiled.

“Thank you, young man. Oh, you’re so handsome.” The woman turned to her husband next to her who was reading the program through horn-rimmed glasses with his head tilted-back, granting him five chins. “Horace, isn’t he handsome?”

Horace waved a hand as if to say, Yeah, yeah, I don’t care, then asked Ben, “Have you seen that show on the Discovery Channel about the men who work the oil rigs?” Ben politely listened and nodded along to Horace’s symposium about whatever TV he had seen that week.

Finally, at a lull in the one-sided conversation, Ben smiled and said, “Well, I have to get back to greeter duties, but if there’s anything else I can do for you, please let me know, and I’m sorry for your loss.” Knowing he had a gorgeous date later that night helped him tolerate the smells and blathering of the geriatric. He purposefully scheduled dates on the nights of funerals so he could have something to look forward to, and a means to decompress.

The ceremony started fifteen minutes late, and Ben stood in the back of the event hall tapping his loafers together and biting his nails. It was a filthy habit—no woman wanted a man who bit his nails—but he couldn’t quell the fear that he would be late for his date. He told Arlene he might be late, as the timetable of a funeral is unpredictable, but he wanted to meet her at 7:30 at the latest, and he still had to transfer the deceased to the cemetery in the neighboring town of Green Hills. Earlier, black storm clouds promising rain began to tumble in from the west, and heavy rain would only add to the tragedy of being stood up. He hated the thought of Arlene alone in her car, waiting for him.

An older gentleman wearing a tweed suit labored to the microphone and introduced himself as Jim, the deceased’s husband. He had gaunt cheeks, a round head, and the splotches of red and purple under both eyes that the elderly always seem to acquire. He thanked everyone for coming and launched into a lengthy story about his wife’s obsession with different types of plastic. “‘Don’t eat or drink anything when you see a 3,’ the man said in a grumbling interpretation of his wife. “‘That has BPAs. You want the polyethylene. That’s the bottles with the 1.’” The assembly laughed. Jim went on to say that although he pretended his wife’s plastic lectures annoyed him, he secretly loved her many quirks, and dwindled into low sobs.

When he began this job fourteen years ago, Ben felt guilty for concerning himself with such boyhood trivialities as dating when surrounded by mourning family members, but now, he’d seen enough funeral services to become numb to death. He’d prepared and transported men, women, children, parents, murder victims, burn victims, cancer victims, and once, a 70-year-old man with Argyria, a disease where the skin turns a greyish blue. The man worked in several factories including one that specialized in melting sterling silver for jewelry, and another that manufactured steel airplane parts, and the amount of silver he incidentally ingested over decades turned his skin the same color. The condition was benign, but the diagnosis delivered him a lethal heart attack. The family hadn’t seen the man in over a year, and Ben suggested a closed casket ceremony. To Ben, the guy looked like the tin man from The Wizard of Oz.

He sat through three more speakers, covertly checking the time on his phone every couple minutes. It was 6:15. Shit. He bit his nails through a horrible five-minute rendition of “Amazing Grace” performed by the deceased’s two young granddaughters. Then, the mass moved onto the patio and released a basket of doves into the air. At 6:30, Ben concluded the ceremony and said, “Everyone please congregate in the banquet hall next door for snacks and refreshments. If, during the reception, you’d like to come back and have a private moment with the deceased, feel free.” He paused, then added, over the sound of shuffling feet, “You will have until 7:00 to do so.”

At that, Sarah—directing people into the banquet hall—narrowed her brow and shot him a confused glance. After everyone had left, she asked, “Why only a half hour? You got somewhere to be, old man? Another hot mom?”

“Maybe,” Ben said with a smirk. “I’m gonna be late though, so I might have an empty table waiting for me when I get there.”

“Rough,” Sarah teased with a grin. “I’m twenty-three and I haven’t even had my first kiss, and you go on a date every other day. How does that work? Don’t get me wrong, you’re a stone-cold fox or whatever, but you need to teach me your methods. You’re really not on the apps?”

“Nope,” Ben said. “Coffee shops. Bookstores. Hell, even places like this, sometimes. Just gotta talk to people.”

“Oof, that’s a dealbreaker for me.”

Ben laughed and checked the time on his phone again—6:33.

“I’m sure the caterers and I can hold down the reception and teardown if you need to bounce,” Sarah told him, “but you still have to take the lady to Green Hills.” She hitchhiked a thumb at the closed casket.

Ben turned and looked at the foam board picture of the smiling old woman next to the casket. She had short white hair, rectangular glasses, and the jowls of a bloodhound, but her smile was infectious. “Yeah, I know.”

“Might want to cancel that date. Round-trip is an hour, at least. No way you get back to Tara Village on time.”

“Way ahead of you. I actually scheduled the date at a restaurant in Green Hills, because I knew this would happen.”

“Wow, look at you,” Sarah buzzed. “What place? My friends and I go into Green Hills on the weekend to go bar hopping.”

“Oh, I don’t remember the name. It’s plugged into Maps already. Some Irish place. Prime rib and creamed corn and creamed spinach and…creamed everything, I guess.”

“Hopefully that’s not the only thing creaming tonight, am I right?” Sarah winked and held out her palm for a high-five.

“I’m not high-fiving that. Jesus, I’m old enough to be your dad. Go make yourself useful and hand out drinks or something.”

Sarah laughed her way into the banquet hall and disappeared into throngs of people. Ben stood his post at the corner of the event hall as loved ones came and went in small groups, murmuring over the casket, some people placing small trinkets on the side-table designated for such “treasures.” At 6:57, after five minutes of no visitors, Ben ended the visiting time three minutes early and employed Sarah’s help, along with the help of two other facility members at the senior center (who were probably used to being insourced for such tasks) to load the casket into the back of the black hearse.

The attendees gathered in the entrance hallway, not willing to venture into the downpour, and watched the hearse disappear into a wash of rain. Ben looked in the rear-view mirror and saw waving hands and crying wives burrowing into their husbands’ shoulders. Two minutes later, Ben exited the wrought-iron gates of the senior living community and turned onto Bellevue Road.

He considered taking the freeway, but the rain launched a vehement assault, and even on Bellevue, a 40 MPH road, the windshield wipers on their fastest setting, the visibility was horrendous. He saw brief, distorted snapshots of stop lights and tail lights, but he couldn’t see the dashed lane lines, and apparently neither could the other drivers, because the night sang with car horns and ambulance sirens.

At the western edge of Green Hills, Bellevue became a one-lane road that weaved through a mountainous, wooded area. The hearse’s engine protested the steady incline, groaning threats to overheat and stall. The trees offered some shelter from the rain, but not much. His heart rate slowed, however, because he hadn’t seen a car going either way for five minutes, which allowed him to drive at a moderate speed. He drove further into murky nothingness, feeling like a man wearing swimming goggles filled with water.

He turned right onto McMurphy Street, barely delineating the outline of the orange NO OUTLET sign. He followed McMurphy for another half-mile until he reached the chain-link fence of an old gravel pit that had been abandoned some time before he became a transfer care specialist. He parked at the base of McMurphy Street, sandwiched between the gravel pit and the woods, put the hearse in park, and killed the engine. The sound of rain instantly multiplied, and wonky thuds reverberated across the hood and roof.

Ben turned the rearview mirror toward him, adjusted his tie, and tucked a strand of unruly wet hair behind his ear. He smiled at his reflection and admired his two rows of straight, white teeth. What woman could resist that smile? He got out of the car, stepped over the oil spot the hearse left earlier that week (before he got the leak fixed), and swung open the rear door of the hearse. He stepped inside, hunched over, his body folded at a ninety-degree angle, and closed the door. Again, he adjusted his tie and suit jacket.

He unlocked the casket, opened the top, and received his first look at his date. Arlene still boasted a sweep of white hair and her cumbersome jowls, but she looked much older than her picture. Wasn’t that always the case?

“Arlene? Pleased to meet you, I’m Ben. Sorry I’m late. I hope I’m not being too forward when I say you look beautiful tonight. Wow, red mahogany with ivory velvet interior. You spared no expense. You even have the matching pillow and throw. Should I take that as a hint?”