He gives me a look of utter disgust. I don’t care at all. I want him to report all of it back to Frank Flynn. I can see the big red ball of Sophie’s dad’s bald head going scarlet right now. Boom. Like a train crossing.

That’s the only thing that’s made me truly smile in a very long, very sad four days.

A young woman at the front desk catches my eye as I leave. She certainly wasn’t there when I arrived. She’s extremely pretty. Probably no more than twenty-three, maybe even younger. I wonder why she’s working in such a morbid industry. She looks normal, like Marilyn in the old Munsters TV show, stuck in a funeral home with the likes of creepy James Deacon. I give her a good look. Big brown eyes. Long, curly dark hair. In another time and place I’d have asked her out without a thought about it. I’d be able to brag to my friends that I picked up a hot chick at a funeral home. It wouldn’t matter how truly hot she was or what the sex was like, I’d get lots of points for the audacity of it all.

By the time I return to my car, I get the call. Just as I knew I would.

“Hi, Frank,” I say, as if the call is unexpected. “What’s up?”

“What’s up?” he says, all puffed up, I’m sure. “I just got off the phone with Western Hills. Jesus Christ, what kind of a man are you? Denying your wife a proper burial!”

“She didn’t believe in that, Frank.”

“Yes,” he says, “she did. In fact, we had a plot for her. It’s not like you had to pay for anything, you goddamn cheap son of a bitch.”

I half hope that Frank has a heart attack just now. It’s a fleeting hope. Despite smoking, drinking, overeating, and having a heart the size of a peanut, Frank Flynn will probably outlive us all. A nuke could drop, and Frank could be the king of the roaches. He’d like that. Roaches wouldn’t talk back. Lord of the Roaches. I like that. That face of his is still red, I’m sure. Frank doesn’t like to be challenged, questioned, or contradicted. He’s a control freak of the highest order. I want to tell him that Sophie was embarrassed by him more times than I could count. And I’m in finance. But I don’t. I crank up the AC.

“It’s not about the money, Frank,” I say. “Sophie had life insurance. If I wanted to, I could build her a goddamn mausoleum on my own.”

Frank is flat-out seething. I love it.

“You make me sick, Adam,” he says. “You are a piece of garbage.”