The Widow's Guide to Sex and Dating Read Online Free PDF Page A

felt light—too light—like an actress auditioning for a role in an ironic comic film. The funeral home was a nondescript brownstone on Lexington. Claire had passed by here many times without knowing it. Inside, the showroom’s floor-to-ceiling drapes and brass chandelier were intended, she assumed, to create a sense of sophistication for the bereaved. Instead, she found the decor theatrical and macabre, as if a ghoulish performance of The Phantom of the Opera were about to break out. Charlie, Carter the funeral director informed her, was in the basement.
    Carter Hinckley of Wanamaker and Sons wore a lightweight gray suit and carried a black leather binder. He had a strong nose and confident stance; he was conventionally handsome. “My condolences, Mrs. Byrne,” he said, and held out his hand. His hair was slicked back; he sounded older than he looked.
    Claire wondered if Carter Hinckley knew her husband, if he’d read any of Charlie’s books. She knew that people thought of her husband’s work when they met her. Upon introduction, men and women alike reflexively visualized what they imagined must be a tunnel of gold beneath her skirt, to have snared such a discriminating connoisseur as Charles Byrne. The men were typically intrigued, the women bemused; it showed in their eyes.
    Claire watched Carter Hinckley’s dark eyes and found herself hostage to lewd thoughts. Here she was, barely into her second day widowed, wondering how a young funeral director was picturing her cunt.
    “I know this is hard,” Carter said. Hard . Charlie had instilled in Claire a sophomoric obsession with sex; she was drawn to Carter’s crotch as if he’d pointed.
    She’d never thought herself the sort of girl who’d seduce her husband’s mortician. I know this is hard, said the swarthy undertaker. It doesn’t have to be, Claire replied, unbuckling his belt.
    It’s the pills , Claire thought. Carter held the Wanamaker and Sons brochure between a thumb and two fingers. His wrist was bent back at an angle to keep it from flopping, to keep the brochure, as it were, erect. He pointed it straight out at Claire, and Claire relieved him of it. She was impressed by Carter’s comportment; she adjusted her posture.
    “I’m going to cremate him,” she said. “That is what he wished.” What he wished?
    She went on. “So I don’t need a coffin.”
    There was an awkward pause and then Carter cleared his throat.
    “You will still need a casket , actually.” Carter stressed the word casket . He couldn’t help himself. Coffins were for vampires, no one ever got it right. “Even in the case of … I’m sorry, excuse me.” He reached for a cloth in his pocket, and as he turned away from her, his eyes seized up tight, his mouth stretched open, and his features became abstract, like Munch’s The Scream . He paused, held the pose, then captured the explosion, quick and neat, in a light-colored cloth, which he wielded expertly with his right hand.
    When had she last seen a handkerchief? Claire couldn’t imagine Charlie with a handkerchief. She couldn’t picture Charlie in a sneeze.
    “Although you’ve chosen to cremate the remains of your husband—”
    “I’m sorry,” Claire interrupted. She wanted desperately to regain ground. “I know you told me it, your name.”
    “My name is Carter, Mrs. Byrne.” The “Mrs.” wedged twenty years between them. Was she even, technically, still a Mrs.? She could insist he call her Claire, but that might be awkward. Call me Claire. She didn’t know how to behave with the “Mrs.”; Carter wouldn’t know how to act without it.
    “As I said, although you’re cremating Mr. Byrne, we do still arrange the body. He will go through his stages in a casket .” He spoke the words with dramatic flair, as though he were reciting a poem.
    “Well, then, I suppose I should take the cheapest one.”
    She and Charlie had never worried for money; his royalties were steady and would, likely, see an uptick