Ben stood at the counter, running his fingers through the cord to telephone. As his hand ran down the cord, he would pass a few of the tightly bound coils before pausing, and investigating the looping cable for a few seconds, only to continue with his hand on its way down the cord. Occasionally the process would cease entirely as he ran through everything he was planning to say again. Finally, after what seemed like entirely too long, the ringing stopped and a tired sounding female voice answered.

“Hello?”

“Hello? Hi. This is Ben and I’m calling to give my condolences about Bill.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“He was a good man, and he will be missed.”

“He was. He always said if he had to go he just… well, never mind.”

“I’m sorry Mrs. Gartner. I know you don’t know me, but Bill and I go way back and if there’s anything I can do to help, please just let me know.”

“Thank you. Right now I just need some time to figure everything out.”

“I understand completely. You know, I feel kind of weird offering this, but I run a funeral home, and if you don’t already have arrangements made, I would give you a really good price on everything, on account of Bill and all.”

“What?”

“Well, I run a funeral home, and I couldn’t possibly charge you for services what I normally would.”

Benjamin glances at the open obituaries section in his local newspaper. At a picture of a smiling couple, the Gartners.

“You know he hates when people call him Bill? Nobody has called him Bill since he was a little boy, and he hated it then. His older brother got a bunch of the boys at school calling him something vulgar with the name Bill. He has gone by Will or William for most of his life. Exactly how did you know him?

“Oh, well, we went to school together, and I moved before middle school so we lost touch.”

“Oh, and where exactly did you move to?”

“Uh. Well, we moved out to Joplin for my father’s work.”

“Oh, so just a little ways south?”

“Yeah, but when you’re a kid, that’s all it takes to make it hard to see someone much anymore.”

“Funny thing about that is that Will didn’t grow up north of Joplin. He grew up in Nevada.  What school did you go to exactly?”

“Uh, well, you’ll have to excuse me, but I can’t recall the name of it now.”

“I know what this is. You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re a vulture picking at his corpse, you son of a-“

Benjamin hangs up the phone. He stands looking at the wall, not really thinking much about anything but feeling bad about himself and the choices he has made. He crosses over his kitchen to the dining table where his yellow pages rest open to the Gs. Resting on the table are a black pen, a pencil, and a red pen, the latter of which he takes and crosses out the third entry under “Gartner.” This is the last of the Gartners. He is somewhat dismayed to realize that calling and wishing his condolences to the wrong numbers was easier and less awkward than actually getting through to the right number. He sighs and slumps down into the chair next to the yellowpages.

The truth is more that Ben had never been well known or well liked, so though he often told people, and most especially his clients, that he was from wherever they were from, the truth was that he had grown up in that town. The funeral home was his, and had been in his family for ages. It was an old Victorian style structure, and when he had grown up the upper floor could have been used as living quarters, and occasionally was when his father was very busy with work. Back then, they had had a separate home.

About a year ago Ben was forced to sell his family home. He moved into the quarters up above the working area, and he had lived there since then. It’s not much surprise that he wasn’t well known, people tend to spend as little time around funeral homes as possible.

Business just wasn’t like it used to be. Not since that Neptune’s Society came into town. But that was about 8 years ago, and he hadn’t been hurt too badly by the competition until recently, when the economy began to tank. That was when he was slowly forced to move out of his apartment into the home he grew up in, and then from there to where he lives now. Nobody could afford proper funerals anymore, everyone was opting to go for cremation because it was cheaper.

Ben couldn’t understand why. A good funeral is an art, it takes skill. There is no skill in cremation, and they still have the gall to charge you what they do. A funeral caters to every whim of the family of the deceased, they pick everything and Ben makes it all happen for them. If they want flowers that are out of season, then Ben makes it happen. If they want extravagant or obscure materials for the casket, then Ben finds it. If they want an open-casket funeral despite the deceased having been hit by a train then if it is at all possible, Ben makes it work. It is a craft, and he learned everything he knows from his father, he was known to be one of the best in the business as far as several states wide. He used to be a speaker at their conventions, and people wanted to hear what he had to say; Ben’s father was a respected man in the trade.

Ben was good, but he wasn’t as good as his father. He didn’t really stand out from the rest, and nobody went to funeral home directors’ conventions anymore. Ben had attempted to go to one to see what had changed since he had gone to the last one with his father, and the sparsely populated convention center strewn with models of caskets, and fake flowers was somehow worse than even the most dreary funerals Ben had hosted. He didn’t go back.

Author’s note: Originally written around 2008, this short has served as inspiration for another project that is ongoing. Again, you’ll have to forbid (or not) my morbid humor in making this one of the first writing-related posts.