Page 40 of Vera Stein Is Fine
Emery nodded seriously. “I’ll give you an extra five hundred if you cancel on the others,” she said.
Beside me, Leonard was gobsmacked, probably envisioning all the plants he could buy. Maybe even a new birdcage. “That’s quite the—”
“What exactly are your plans for the coffin?” I asked, interrupting Leonard again.
Emery spoke nervously with her hands as she said, “Okay, so a little morbid, I know...”
“Honey, it’s a casket,” Leonard said with a chuckle. “It doesn’t get more morbid than that.”
That seemed to set Emery at ease. “Okay, so I’m a party experience designer-coordinator—”
“So, a party planner?” I asked.
She gave me a brief but withering look. “Right, well, I’ve booked this joint bachelor-bachelorette weekend with the theme Till Death Do Us Part. The couple is very edgy, and I’m certain this would be perfect as a beverage station. We could tear out the silk lining and put some kind of tarp in it. Fill it with hard seltzers and maybe some premade shots. Voilà!”
Leonard stood there, words coming to him in fits but never fully formed. He was silent for so long that I almost wondered if he needed medical intervention. But most of all, I was a little shocked. Leonard’s attitude toward death seemed to lean on the irreverent side, but it became immediately clear that this coffin held more meaning than he was letting on.
Emery looked to me rather than just asking Leonard directly if he was okay.
But physically, Leonard was fine. Emotionally, I wasn’t so sure he was handling the coffin cooler idea in stride.
“I don’t think this is going to work,” I finally said, and the tension in Leonard’s shoulders eased. Patrick chirped from the other room. “Yeah, definitely not,” I continued. “Maybe you could look into a Halloween store or something.”
Emery let out a little pout. “But—”
“Let me help you to the door,” I said.
As I walked her out, Emery tried offering an extra two hundred dollars on top of the five hundred and even promised she could have the casket out of here in an hour.
I shook my head as I shuffled her out the door. “Yeah, I think you’re going to have to find a different coffin to upcycle.”
When I walked back inside, Leonard’s bottom lip was trembling, and it hurt to witness. The moment he noticed me staring, he turned to me and said, “Well, I suppose you have more important things to do than sit around here.”
I didn’t know what I could possibly say. Leonard was an onion and I was nowhere near the center. I could understand why he didn’t want to see the casket become a glorified cooler, but I wondered if he even wanted to see the thing go to begin with.
“My writing group meets in the main building bimonthly, by the way,” he said as he walked me to the door. “You should come by.”
“I just might,” I said, lying straight through my teeth.
Chapter Seventeen
Eli’s office and clinic were on the second floor of the main building. When I walked in, his nurse, Jake, said he was just finishing up with a resident and told me I could wait in his office.
There was no artwork, photographs, or even trinkets in Eli’s office. I didn’t realize I was looking for hints about his personal life until I didn’t find any. What had dear old Eli been up to since college? Did he go into cardiology and then fall from grace? Was he married? He didn’t wear a ring, but most of Mom’s physicians didn’t wear rings during their workday.
“I guess you’re here for the car keys.”
I started at the deep timber of his voice. “You didn’t have to do that,” I told him as I turned around.
He sat down and shook his head. There were bags under his eyes and I wondered if he’d stayed up late or got up early to deal with it.
When he set his stethoscope down on his desk, I noticed a grease stain on his otherwise crisp jeans.
“You didn’t fix it yourself, did you?” I asked.
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I just never took you for someone who does things you could pay someone else to do.”
