A Playdate With Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

rock to the burial site. I stood with the AA contingent on the outskirts of the crowd and watched as the members of Bobby’s family gathered around the grave. The coffin was perched on a hydraulic lift over the gaping hole. There was a pile of earth covered in a large piece of what looked like AstroTurf to one side of the open grave, and the air was redolent with the meaty smell of soil and grass. The rabbi began to sing the prayers in his deep, atonal voice, and a few of the onlookers joined him. Dredging up the Hebrew words from somewhere deep in my memory, I murmured along with them. The deeply familiar prayers brought tears to my eyes, yet I found them soothing and peaceful. So slowly that it seemed almost imperceptible, the coffin began to sink into the grave. It landed with a faint and final thump, and, one by one, each member of Bobby’s family took a small trowel full of dirt and spilled it onto the coffin. After the last of them had gone, Betsy pushed forward and took the trowel out of the pile of earth. She dumped the dirt into the grave and cried, “I love you, Bobby. We’ll be together someday. I promise you.”
    I glanced over at Bobby’s parents in time to catch his mother’s face pinch into an angry scowl. Bobby’s father reached an arm around his wife and drew her away from the scene. The two of them, flanked by their children, walked back to the waiting limousines.

    S INCE the ban on the presence of recovering addicts at Bobby’s parents’ home after the service obviously did not include me, I decided to head over there with the rest of the guests. I got the address from Laurence, Bobby’s boss, and found my way to a large Mediterranean-style home set far back from the road on a block of almost identical houses. Bobby’s parents had put out quite a spread, and it was a little while before I could pry myself away from the buffet table. Finally, having gorged myself to a rather embarrassing degree on blintzes, whitefish salad, and those fruit minitarts that are ubiquitous at every L.A. event, be it a funeral or a movie opening, I made my way through the crowd in the direction of Bobby’s family.
    They were making a fairly symbolic effort at sitting shivah, the traditional Jewish mourning ritual. They sat on low chairs, but they all wore their shoes and had on little black polyester scarves that they’d torn at the corner, instead of rending their own garments. I know that’s not unusual, that only the ultra-Orthodox still tear their clothing, but still, it seemed somehow to belie the sincerity of their mourning, like they were sad, but not sad enough to ruin a good shirt. I stood in a line of people and finally reached Bobby’s mother.
    “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said, echoing everyone else. What else is there to say?
    “Thank you,” she murmured and looked beyond me at the next person.
    “Um, I was a client of Bobby’s,” I said, trying to keep her attention.
    “Oh?”
    “He was a wonderful trainer. So knowledgable.”
    She didn’t answer, just nodded politely and reached out her hand to the woman standing behind me.
    “I’m so sorry for your loss,” the other woman said.
    I wandered through the line, expressing my condolences to the rest of the family. His two sisters and brother all looked quite a bit older than he’d been, the oldest sister by as much as a dozen years. But then, Bobby might have been older than I thought. His business did require a certain youthful appearance.
    I stood for a while in a corner of the room and then caught the eye of a short man with a hairline that had receded to the purely hypothetical. He sidled over to me.
    “Were you a friend of Bobby’s?” he asked.
    “A client. And a friend. I’m Juliet Applebaum,” I replied.
    “I’m Larry. He was my brother-in-law. I’m married to Michelle.”
    “Bobby’s sister?”
    “The younger one. Over there, that’s Lisa, she’s the oldest. And that’s her husband Mitch.” He pointed to the