4

When I went to work for this newspaper I was forty years old, the same age as Jack London when he died. I'm now forty-six. Elvis Presley died at forty-six. So did President Kennedy. George Orwell, too.

It's an occupational hazard for obituary writers—memorizing the ages at which famous people have expired, and compulsively employing such trivia to track the arc of one's own life. I can't seem to stop myself.

Not being a rotund pillhead with clogged valves, I am statistically unlikely to expire on the toilet, as Elvis did. As for succumbing to a political assassination, I'm too obscure to attract a competent sniper. Nonetheless, my forty-sixth birthday brought a torrent of irrational anxieties that have not abated in eleven months. If death could snatch such heavy hitters as Elvis and JFK, a nobody like me is easy pickings.

Implicit in the dread of early demise is a lugubrious awareness of underachievement. At my age, Elvis was the King; Kennedy, the leader of the free world. Me, I'm sitting in a donut shop in Beckerville reading a newspaper story about a dead musician, a story I apparently have botched. Nice display, though: front of the Metro section, above the fold. The text is accompanied by a recent Reuters photo of the deceased, looking tanned and happy at a benefit barbecue for Reef Relief. Even the headline isn't terrible: Ex-Rocker Dies in Bahamas Diving Mishap.(James Bradley Stomarti, by the way, passed away at the same age as Dennis Wilson and John Kennedy Jr.)

Janet Thrush—who else could it be?—takes the stool next to me and says, "First off, nobody calls me Jan."

"Deal."

"It's Janet. My ex once called me Jan and I stuck a cocktail fork in his femoral artery."

I am careful to display no curiosity about the marriage.

"So, Janet,exactly how did Cleo Rio scam me?"

"She lied about her new record—'Waterlogged Heart' or whatever. Jimmy's not producing it."

Janet has freckles on her nose and unruly ash-blond hair and green bulb earrings the size of Yule ornaments. She's wearing Wayfarers and a pastel tube top over tight jeans, and looks at least five years younger than her brother.

"How do you know he wasn't producing it?" I ask.

"A, because Jimmy would've told me. B, because he was too busy working on his own record."

"Hold on." I reach for my pen and notebook.

"Fact, I didn't even know Cleo hada CD in the works. My brother never said a word about it."

"When's the last time you spoke?"

"Day he died." Janet blows on her coffee, steaming up the sunglasses.

"He called you from the Bahamas?"

She nods. "I can't ever call him.Not with her around. Cleo goes jiggy-"

In contrast to Jimmy's widow, Janet speaks of her late brother in the present tense, which enhances her credibility. I write down what she says, even though there's little chance of using it in another story. Obituaries tend to be one-shot deals.

Besides, it's her word against Cleo's.

"She didn't even mention his new record?" Janet sounds incredulous.

"Not a word."

"What a tramp." Her voice cracks. The coffee cup is suspended halfway to her lips.

"She told me Jimmy was finished with the music business until he met her," I say.

"And you believed that?"

"Why wouldn't I? He hasn't had an album out since Stomatose.Besides, you never called me back yesterday. The story would have been different if you had."

This is low on my part, pinning a factual omission on a grieving relative. Janet, however, seems unoffended.

"FYI," she says, "my brother's been working on that album for four years. Maybe five."

I feel vaguely sick to my stomach. Some reporter in the music trades probably knows about the unfinished Jimmy Stoma CD, and it'll be the lead of his story. It would've been the lead of mine,too, if only Jimmy's widow had thought to tell me about it.

"You don't look so good, Mr. Tagger. You get a bad cruller?"

"Call me Jack. Why doesn't Cleo like you?"

"Because I know what she is." Janet smiles tightly. "Now you know, too."

In the parking lot, I walk Jimmy's sister to her car, an old black Miata that looks about as perky as a rat turd. By way of explanation, she says, "I clobbered an ambulance." Then she adds: "Not on purpose, don't worry."

I tell her I've got one more question; a heavy one. "You think your brother's really dead?"

Janet gives me a long look. "Glad you asked," she says. "Let's go for a ride."

The mortuary is only a few blocks off the interstate. It looks like every suburban funeral home in America; pillars, inlaid brick, and a tidy hedge.

I hate these places. Writing about death is as close as I want to get, but given a choice, I'll take a chainsaw-murder scene over a funeral visitation any day.

"This is where I was," says Janet, "when you tried to call yesterday."

We must climb out of the little convertible because the crumpled doors will not open.

"So you already saw the body?" I ask.

"Yup."

"Then I'll take your word that Jimmy's dead."

When Janet removes her sunglasses, I see she's been crying. "That's what they teach you in newspaper school?" she says. "To believe every damn fool thing you're told? What if I'm lying?"

"You're not." Me, the wise old pro.

I follow her inside. Some guy who smells like rotten gardenias and looks like a used-furniture salesman sidles into the foyer, then recoils at the sight of Janet, with whom he obviously has interacted before.

"You cooked my big brother yet?"

"Pardon me?" The man wears a dyspeptic grimace.

"The cremation, Ellis. Remember?"

"In an hour or so."

"Good," says Janet. "I want to see him one more time."

The funeral director, Ellis, glances at me warily. I know that look; he thinks I'm a cop. Possibly this is because my necktie could be an artifact from Jack Webb's estate.

Ellis says, "Is there something wrong?"

Without missing a beat, Janet says, "This is the drummer in Jimmy's first band. He flew all the way from Hawaii."

Ellis is relieved. We follow him down a hallway to a door marked Staff Only. It is not, thank God, the crematorium.

Four wooden caskets sit side by side, each on its own padded gurney. In Florida, every corpse gets embalmed and every corpse gets a coffin, even for cremation. It's a law that exists for no other reason than to pad the profits of funeral-home proprietors. Janet points to a blond walnut casket with an orange tag twist-tied to one of the handles. "Burn ticket," she explains.

Ellis dutifully opens the top half of the bisected lid ... and there's Jimmy Stoma.

All things considered, he looks pretty darn spiffy. Better, in fact, than he did on some of his album covers. He's so lean and fit, you wouldn't guess he once outweighed Meat Loaf.

James Bradley Stomarti lies before us in splendid attire: a coal-black Armani jacket over a white silk shirt buttoned to the throat. A fine diamond stud glistens in one earlobe. His cropped brown hair, flecked with silver, shines with mousse.

Every dead rock musician should look so good.

As his sister steps closer, I'm thinking it's fortunate that Jimmy Stoma's body was recovered right away. Ellis, the funeral guy, undoubtedly has the same thought: One more day of floating in shark-infested waters under that hot Bahamian sun, and you're talking closed casket.

Tightly closed.

"You did an awesome job," I tell Ellis, because that's what Jimmy's geeky drummer friend would have said.

"Thank you," Ellis says. Then, for Janet's benefit: "He was a very handsome fellow."

"Yeah, he was. Jack?" She beckons with a finger.

I ask Ellis to give us some privacy, and with practiced aplomb he backs out of the room. He will return later, I know, to make sure we didn't spoil his Christmas by beating him to Jimmy's earring.