"The giving it away?"

"Yeah. God was that hard."

"I know," he said.

"It's shaming, don't you think?"

"Why?"

"I don't know."

– When you give them the bills, Hand, you feel so filthy for having it in the first place.

– I guess.

– It's like returning something you've stolen.

"You think she's okay?" I asked. "I was afraid someone would see me give her the money and then come and take it from her."

"I'm sure she's fine."

"Someone's going to take it from her," I said.

"She's smart."

"We should stay with her."

"She looked tough," Hand said.

"I'm so confused," I said.

"I know."

"Why the fuck is that so weird? Why is it so hard?" We had no idea.

We walked to the hotel and knew I was getting close. We'd promised not to sleep but here we were. I feared the bed. The bed tonight would break me.

– Hand let's not sleep.

I could drink to pass out and keep from thinking. That would be the plan. I could make it sound fun, have Hand and I drink from the minibar, if there was one, or buy a bottle of something on the way home, act like it was part of the trip's grand design. The grand design was movement and the opposition of time, not drinking, hiding, sleeping. Too late. I haven't won yet. You won't win. I don't want even two minutes with my head. I don't know where it would go tonight but knew that the funeral home fucker was there somewhere. He was getting closer, he was somewhere in the basement of my mind and he was pacing and getting ready to climb my hollow stairs -

"We could go to the mosque," Hand offered. I loved him for taking me back into the air.

"Which?" I asked.

"That one there."

"That's not a mosque. Look at it. It's a church."

We walked closer to the huge white structure, ghostly in the dark shooting upward. A sign gripped the wrought-iron fence separating the park from the sidewalk: Cathédrale du Sacré Coeur.

"That's odd," Hand said.

"Let's get something to drink and head back to the hotel," I said.

"Boring. You tired?"

"Yes."

Jack's mom asked us to come to the service early. She and Jack's dad, who could barely stand and had spent the day before the service in a wheelchair, weak beyond hope, hadn't settled on whether it would be an open or closed casket, and wanted us to help decide, once we saw Jack.

"Then we'll sleep tonight but not again," he said.

"Good. Fine."

We got to the church at two for the three o'clock service, and waited, in the lobby, fanning ourselves with paperback psalm books. It was almost one hundred degrees, and the church wouldn't turn on the air conditioning until ten minutes before three. Jack's dad was outside, on the bright bleached patio between the church and the rectory, in his wheelchair, staring at the flowerbed, full of cheap daisies and dying groundcover. I hadn't had that much to say to him for ten years or so, since he sent Jack to Culver Military Academy for a year. He'd been caught stealing a six-pack of Coors from their basement fridge and that was that. Jack's sister Molly wasn't there, hadn't been heard from in three years; there'd been the distant fear she would show up, but it was not to be.

Jack's mom left to get candles; the priest had realized they were short on white ones and was about to use red. Jack's mom wailed No and, out of something like madness, insisted on white, hissed to the priest that it had to be white, and drove off to find two tall slender white candles.

She asked us to stay, to look first at Jack, and if he looked okay, she and her husband would then decide.

The funeral home man, Nigel, emerged from the back twenty minutes before three. He was only a few years older than us, with glasses held within thick black rims. His eyes were vibrating and his heavily gelled hair thrust from his head with cold competence, like dewy plastic grass.

"He's ready, if you want to take a look," he said. We hated him. We followed him into the church and from the back I knew it was wrong. The casket was half-open and it was wrong. From so far away Jack was grey, or blue. The color was wrong.

"Jesus," I said, and stopped.

"What?" Hand said. "You don't know yet."

"I do know."

"I know he looks bad from here but it's the light, probably. These people know what they're doing."

"Who says?"

"People do this all the time. Everyone has open caskets."

"It's so wrong."

"We have to get closer."

Nigel was waiting for us, a few feet down the aisle, his head slightly bowed, deferential to our discussion. Hearing that we would get closer, he lifted his chin, gave a tight smile and nodded. We followed him. My legs felt asleep. They felt so light. They were hollow and being moved by someone else.

Ten steps further it was obvious. They'd fucked it all up. Jesus Christ. He was grey. His face was huge and wide. They'd added feet of flesh to his face. There was too much flesh. It flowed down from his nose like drapery. There was no color on his skin – there was a dull hue, like house paint, and there was blush on the hollows of his cheeks, as if applied by young girls with paintbrushes. He looked fifty. His hair was parted, but on the wrong side.

"So fucked up," I said.

"I know," Hand whispered.

We'd stopped again, about twenty feet from the casket. The lining of the casket was silver and was too shiny. He looked sixty.

"Please," Nigel said, with his arm extended toward Jack's body, hand open, asking us to get closer.

"Please no," Hand said. "Please fuck off."

They'd messed it all up. I'd never seen anyone before like this, never an open casket, and it was wrong. These people were imbeciles. Who wanted this? This was criminal. Where had they gotten all the extra flesh? It hung from him, it swam down into his starched white shirtcollar. His chin was loose, liquid. Who wanted this?

"Justin, William, you should really examine the work we've done. If you're worried about the accident, you should know that we took great care to obscure the puncture to his left temple -" Nigel was interrupted by Hand, who grabbed him at the bend of his arm and turned violently toward him.

"If you don't fucking leave us, fucker, I will break everything in you that can be broken."

Nigel exhaled through his nose, and left. Jack's mom returned a few minutes later. Hand and I were sitting across the aisle from each other, on pews at the back, and the casket was closed. She raised her eyebrows to us and we shook our heads.

"Good," she said, and sat down, legs straight in front of her, on the floor of the aisle between us. "Good. Good."

Hand and I were in the Marrakesh hotel room and we'd bought a bottle of wine and he was letting me drink it because he knew. I filled and drank six glasses and was out cold, blissful and stupid.