"You're a natural," I tell him.

Six minutes later I'm dialing Cleo's number.

"Chuck here," Evan answers.

"Still cool?"

"Yep." Keeping his voice low. "She got a long-distance call on another line."

"When she gets off, tell her they screwed up. Tell her the order was supposed to be delivered to 16-G instead."

"But now she wants to keep it."

"What?"

"Yeah, she got a whiff of the meatball sub and it made her hungry. What do I do, man? She gave me a fifty."

"Hell, give her the food."

"Sure?"

"Evan, what would a real deli boy do?"

"Guess you're right."

"And don't forget to ask for an autograph."

"Done," he says.

"Fantastic."

Some things they don't teach in journalism school.

Emma's on her way over, and I'm thinking about the last time I slept with a woman. It was the last Friday in March, five months ago, though it seems longer. Karen from the county morgue. She works for my friend Pete, one of the medical examiners. Lovely Karen Penski; we went out four or five times. She was straw blond and nearly as tall as I am—a serious long-distance runner. Age thirty-six, the same as Marilyn Monroe when she died. Also: Bob Marley. Karen couldn't have cared less. She took no stock in fate, karma or black irony. Every morning she saw death on a slab; to her it was just work product.

We met over the phone when I called the morgue for cause-of-death on a Florida state senator named Billie Hubert, whose obituary I was composing. A famous yellow-dog Democrat, Billie had exited this mortal realm at the same age (seventy) and in the same manner as Nelson Rockefeller, a famous moderate Republican—that is to say, porking a woman who was not his legal spouse. And, like Rockefeller's lover, Billie Hubert's companion hastily had attempted to re-dress him post mortem,with comical results. The owner of the motel, not unacquainted with the local vice patrol, offered no theories as to how the dead man in Room 17 had gotten his left shoe on his right foot, and vice versa.

The news story, carrying Griffin's byline, was plenty tawdry enough to make the front page. My chore was the day-after obit, which was to be mildly worded and played solemnly inside the newspaper. The only reporting left was to nail down the medical reason for Senator Billie Hubert's demise, which the autopsy revealed as an aortic aneurism. This fact came from the lovely Karen, who was also kind enough to mention that Billie's right arm bore the explicit scarlet image of a horned vixen riding a pitchfork—a magnificent detail I could not in good conscience omit from the obituary. That, and the squalid setting in which the senator passed on, somewhat diminished his standing with the Christian Coalition, whose members conveyed their disappointment in him (and in the Union-Register)via multiple mass e-mailings.

Two days after the obit was published, Karen and I met for drinks. Right away she sized up my problem, and offered to bring me to the morgue for "immersion therapy," which I declined. She said that being among laid-out corpses would help to "demystify" death. I explained that I wasn't troubled by the mystery of it so much as the finality. Nothing to be seen in an autopsy room, short of a spontaneous resurrection, could alleviate my concern about that.

I persuaded myself I was attracted to Karen because of her lanky athletic figure and quick sense of humor, but in truth it was the dark nature of her work that intrigued me—transcribing the narrated observations of Pete and the other dissecting pathologists. I couldn't imagine how she slept at night, her skull buzzing with such gory entries. She insisted the morgue job was the best she'd ever had, owing to the lack of customer complaints. And I must say she was, if not totally carefree, a vivacious and upbeat spirit. Heaven knows she enjoyed sex, which gave us at least one thing in common.

The last time we made love, the aforementioned Friday in March, we first ate dinner at a seafood house on the Jupiter Inlet. I remember nothing of the meal or the conversation, which means the evening must have gone well. Afterwards we took A1A all the way back to my apartment, where the CD deck happened to kick off with Exile on Main Street.This elicited a groan of disapproval from Karen, who had already stripped down to a sheer bra and panties. An untimely discussion of musical preferences followed, resulting in my grumpy capitulation. The Stones were replaced with Natalie Merchant, who is splendid unless you're in the mood for "Ventilator Blues," which I was.

Needless to say, the sex was less than transcendental for both of us. I carry a crystal recollection of Karen on top, grinding rather listlessly to some fluttery love ballad while I fumed beneath her, yearning for a backbeat. Her faked orgasm was so unconvincing that I mistook the feeble shudder as a delayed gastric response to the conch fritters, which had been criminally overseasoned. It was a dispiriting end to the relationship, and put lust at a distance for some time.

Now Emma is coming over and I'm pawing through the CD rack in a fevered search for something we both can stand, just in case. Anne's photograph is gone from the refrigerator door and I assume it was I who removed it, not wishing to give Emma the impression that I'm carrying a torch.

The first words I hear upon answering her knock: "Did Evan call yet?"

"He's fine, Emma. Safe and sound."

She ropes me with a fierce hug. You would have thought Evan had turned up alive after forty nights in a Himalayan ice cave. I might be jealous except that I recognize Emma's exuberant relief for what it is: To an ambitious mid-management newspaper editor, the only thing worse than getting one of your reporters killed would be getting one of your interns killed.

"I feel like celebrating," Emma says. She's wearing a pale cotton sundress and sandals. Her toenails, one can't help but observe, are painted canary yellow.

"You like U2?" Poised I am, disc in hand.

"Know what I'd really like to hear? Your man Jimmy Stoma," she says. "I'm dying to know what he was up to when he died."

I show her the stack of CDs from Dommie the Whiz Kid. "About twenty hours' worth. I've barely put a dent in 'em."

"That's all right," Emma tells me. "We've got all night." She smiles playfully and whips something out of her handbag. My desiccated old heart soars.

It's a toothbrush.

21

Something about the first time.

I'm never sure what it means, or how much to believe of what's said. Emma is parsimonious with clues. Meanwhile I hear myself whisper alarming endearments, including at least one spontaneous reference to love (this, while kissing a nipple!). Starved and pitiable I am; a goner.

Meanwhile Emma is as quiet and discreet as a hummingbird. In the shower I nuzzle a soapy earlobe and say: "Will this affect my annual evaluation?"

"Hush. Could you pass the conditioner?"

Later we drag the sheets and pillows off the bed and curl up in the living room, listening to the skeins of Jimmy Stoma's lost album. Within ten minutes Emma is fast asleep, while I slowly drift off to the two-part background vocals of a cut called "Here's the Deal," which is about either marital infidelity or methadone withdrawal—from the chorus it's impossible to tell.

Soon I sink into a dream with a familiar theme, co-starring Janet Thrush. She and I are at the funeral home where we viewed her brother's body, only this time we're staring into an empty velvet-lined coffin. In the dream I'm needling Janet about her belief in reincarnation, and she says there's no harm in keeping an open mind. In my lap is a bucket of fried chicken and I remark that if she's right, we're chowing on somebody's reborn relatives, possibly even my old man. The dream ends with Janet slamming the casket lid on my fingertips.