The Storyteller Read Online Free PDF Page B

laugh at funerals,” Adam said. “It’s because we’re uncomfortable with death, and that’s a reflex. Besides, I bet your mother would much rather know you were celebrating her life with a laugh than know she had you in tears.”
    “My mother would have thought it was funny,” I whispered.
    “There you go.” Adam handed me the CD in its sleeve.
    I shook my head. “You can keep it. In case Naomi Campbell becomes a client.”
    Adam grinned. “I bet your mom would have thought that was funny, too,” he said.
    A week after the funeral, he called me to see how I was doing. I thought this was strange on two counts—because I’d never heard of that kind of customer service from a funeral home, and because Pepper had been the one to hire him, not me. I was so touched by his concern that I baked him a quick babka and took it to the funeral home one day on my way home from work. I’d hoped to drop it off without running into him, but as it turned out, he was there.
    He asked me if I had time for coffee.
    You should know that even that day, he was wearing his wedding ring. In other words, I knew what I was getting into. My only defense is that I never expected to be adored by a man, not after what had happened to me, and yet here was Adam—attractive and successful—doing just that. Every fiber of morality in me that said Adam belonged to someone else was being countermanded by the quiet whisper in my head: Beggars can’t be choosers; take what you can get; who else would ever love someone like you?
    I knew it was wrong to get involved with a married man, but that didn’t stop me from falling in love with him, or wishing he would fall in love with me. I had resigned myself to living alone, working alone, being alone for the rest of my life. Even if I had found someone who professed not to care about the weird puckering on the left side of my face, how would I ever know if he loved me, or pitied me? They looked so similar, and I had never been very good at reading people. The relationship between Adam and me was secretive, kept behind closed doors. In other words, it was squarely in my comfort zone.
    Before you go and say it’s creepy to let someone who’s been embalming people touch you, let me tell you how wrong you are. Anyone who’s died—my mother included—would be lucky to have that last touch be as gentle as Adam’s. I sometimes think that because he spends so much time with the dead, he is the only person who really appreciates the marvel of a living body. When we make love, he lingers over the pulse of my carotid, at my wrist, behind my knees—the spots where my blood beats.
    On the days when Adam comes to my place, I sacrifice an hour or two of sleep in order to be with him. He can pretty much sneak away anytime, thanks to the nature of his business, which requires him to be on call 24/7. It’s also why his wife hasn’t found it suspicious when he disappears.
    “I think Shannon knows,” Adam says today, when I am lying in his arms.
    “Really?” I try to ignore how this makes me feel, as if I am at the top of the roller coaster hill, and I can no longer see the oncoming track.
    “There was a new bumper sticker on my car this morning. It says I MY WIFE .”
    “How do you know she put it there?”
    “Because I didn’t,” Adam says.
    I consider this for a moment. “The bumper sticker might not be sarcastic. It could just be blissfully ignorant.”
    Adam married his high school girlfriend, whom he’d dated through college. The funeral home where he works is his wife’s family business and has been for fifty years. At least twice a week he tells me he is going to leave Shannon, but I know this isn’t true. First, he’d be walking away from his career. Second, it is not just Shannon he’d be leaving, but also Grace and Bryan, his twins. When he talks about them, his voice sounds different. It sounds the way I hope it sounds when he talks about me.
    He probably doesn’t talk about me,