"Hi, Roy." Buddy did as requested, stepping aside. Howie Walsh and a colored helper had the back end.

Howie, who was younger than Roy, shook his head at the sight of the entrance. "This baby'll never make that," said he. The Negro seemed to echo these sentiments with a shining grin.

"It's them screendoor hinges," said Roy. "Buddy's got her as far back as she'll go, right?"

"Right," said Buddy.

"Say, Bud, ya mind? Ask Leo for a screwdriver to get them hinges off. I'd ask him, but he's the bereaved."

"I'll go, Roy," said the white helper, a husky, tanned young fellow who worked summers as a lifeguard at the public pool.

"Wait a minute," Buddy said, getting out his combination penknife/nail file. Holding the door with his ass, he found that the screwheads yielded to his file.

They put the box down while he worked. The colored guy began to whistle softly. "Cut that out," Roy ordered.

When Buddy was done he jiggled the screws in his hand and said: "Plain pine box, huh?" He raised his eyebrows at Leo's stinginess.

Roy peered within the doorway to see whether Leo was nearby, then said discreetly, within a cupped hand: "It just goes in the ground; that's the way he figures."

"What's it inside, just wood full of splinters for Jesus' sake?" asked Buddy.

Roy leaned closer to him. "She won't be laid out in it. We're supposed to arrange her on the couch, like she fell asleep."

"With the Woman's Home Companion in her hand," Howie said. The Negro joined him in a snicker.

"You ain't serious."

"Well, the magazine is just Howie's joke," said Roy, bending to take his corner. "The rest is correct." He looked up. "Hey, Leo's here, isn't he? I don't want to act on my own responsibility in a matter like this. People get riled up about little details."

They maneuvered the coffin through the door. "Now what?" said Howie as they halted in the entrance hall.

Buddy squeezed past them, saying he would get Leo. But when he reached the kitchen his employee had vanished. Where would he go in that filthy bathrobe? Through the window he got an answer: Leo was down at the end of the yard, staring at a flowerbed. It did not seem tasteful to shout, so Buddy left the house and walked to him.

"They're here with the body."

Leo was looking at a mound of fresh earth. "I don't know if I ought to leave him here. Some alley cat might dig him up."

Buddy returned to the house. "He's out there at the grave of his fucking parrot," he told Roy. "This thing has loosened his screws. You better go ahead. I'm gonna call Doc Klingman to give him a sedative."

"I gotta have authorization from somebody for the arrangement of this body," said Roy. "I can't just dump it on the davenport." The Negro chuckled. Dressed in dark clothing, he was hard to discern in the darkened hall now the door was closed.

"He works for you, Buddy," said Howie. "How about it? He don't have any relatives I know of."

Buddy said: "Better find the living room first."

Roy Walsh opened a door on the right, looked in, and said: "This is it."

Buddy entered the room, which was even darker than the hall. Not only were the window shades down; the heavy opaque curtains were closed. The four men plodded in with the coffin. Buddy squinted about in search of light, but found only one lamp, a floor model with a thick shade from which hung a beaded fringe.

"Hell with this," he said, opening the curtains and running the shade up on a window. "We can close them again when you're done, if he wants that."

It was an old room, wallpapered in a brown figure against a tan ground. Buddy hated dreary wallpaper. The sofa was upholstered in green plush. Above it hung two silhouettes on silver paper: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

"Wait a minute," said Buddy to the advancing men and removed a magazine holder from the floor just ahead of them. It held several clean copies of The National Geographic and a crinkled, damp-stained Liberty that looked as if it had been used under a flowerpot: you could see the ring.

"Catch that rocker, too, willya, Bud?" said Howie, who wanted to swing his end around. Buddy scooted it away on its runners.

They lowered the box to the carpet. Realizing the corpse would shortly be revealed, Buddy grew queasy.

Addressing Roy, he said: "You guys know your business. You don't need me. Leo'll be in in a minute." He headed out.

Howie called: "Hey, Buddy." When Buddy turned, the cover was already off the coffin; must have been on there loose, could have fallen off it if they had tripped. "I think you have to agree we did a nice job," Howie said, smiling smugly down on the deceased.

There was nothing for it but that Buddy come back and admire. He saw a younger face than he had expected, painted in bright rouge and brighter lipstick.

Roy said, standing back, hands on hips: "What do you think?"

"I never knew the lady," said Buddy.

"Is that a fact?"

"Not a gray hair on her head." He could see no great resemblance to Leo. No doubt she had been a good-looker when young, with a nose that was at once delicate yet strong. "Awful lot of make-up."

"Them was the instructions," said Roy, reaching in to take the shoulders of the body.

At this Buddy went away again and stared at the china figures on a whatnot shelf in the corner, not turning back until the four men had lifted the dead woman out and put her on the davenport.

"Now what do you think about this afghan?" Roy asked. "Like this, maybe?" He had spread it over her lower body.

Howie said: "She wouldn't be laying here with her shoes on."

Roy agreed, and Howie took them off and paired them neatly on the floor at the end of the sofa.

The four men stood back and regarded the tableau. The young white helper pointed at a maroon satin cushion, the decorative kind never used practically, which lay flat on a footstool, the golden corner-tassels dangling.

"Pillow'd be nice."

"That's a crackerjack idea," Roy said with verve. He fetched it and put it under her head, which had previously been mounted on the little end-bolster of low elevation, part of the upholstery., Buddy couldn't get over the garish make-up job, to complete which Roy now pulled from his pocket a box of Coty powder, removed the puff, and patted the corpse's face with it. Suddenly he handed the box to Howie and put the index finger of his freed hand under his nose to inhibit a sneeze.

"Now," he said, stepping back, "what do you think, Buddy?" As soon as he took his finger away he sneezed anyhow.

"Swell from where I stand, Roy. But maybe Leo-"

"Good enough for me," Roy said. "We got to get back. Two more bodies come in just as we were leaving: old Jack McCord and the little Hunnicut boy who died of infantile paralysis, poor little shaver. It never rains but it pours." He looked at the box. "I'd like to leave this here, but no matter where you stick it, people fall over it. Also it gives what you call a ghoulish impression. Tell Leo we'll be back tomorrow morning."

The four men bent to pick up the coffin.

"See you, Bud," said Howie, going out the door.

"Not soon, I hope," Buddy replied. The colored guy favored him with one last grin over the shoulder.

Alone with her, Buddy looked again at Leo's mother. She must have been real nice-looking as recently as twenty years before, when he had been seventeen. He had started out a year earlier, with a woman of forty-two.

But it was creepy to think of sex in the presence of a corpse, even one painted like a whore. Nor did he have the patience to encounter Leo again.

He went out to his car.

chapter 9.

IN CONTRAST to Leo's late mother, Laverne wore no make-up whatever, and her hair was up in curlers. She had on an old opaque slip that was more modest than most of her dresses.

"You never come this early," she said sullenly.

"Thanks for the big welcome," said Buddy, who on entering had clasped her from behind, hands on breasts, groin between the bulbs of her bottom, but she had coldly twisted away. He sat at the kitchen table, still brooding over the rebuff.

"I had a bad time this morning," he said.

"Who didn't?"

What could be her beef, with the rent paid and nothing to do but curl her hair? But he did not say this aloud. Instead he gave a simplified version of his annoyances: Leo's mother's death, Leo's crackup.

"If he don't come out of it, I need me a new salesman."

Laverne's curlered head did not turn. Seen from the back, her slip was sacklike, with no shape at all. Down towards the hem it bore a pointed scorch mark from the tip of an iron. Buddy put more self-pity in his voice. "As if I needed another problem."

This brought her around. "What other problems have you got?"

There was a kind of jealousy in her question. Buddy pulled back his chin. "What's eating you, Laverne?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing at all, Buddy. I really like sitting here day after day, waiting for you to come and get your ashes hauled and then run home."

"Well, do you have to get foul-mouthed about it? We been through that time and time again and I explained it thoroughly. What did I just tell you yesterday?"

"To turn over so you could do it dog-style."

Buddy flushed with repulsion. "For Christ's sake, Laverne, come on up out of the sewer."

She grinned bitterly. "Yesterday was Sunday, and that's all I can recall. Saturday you said you was working on the situation. Yesterday you never referred to it. You never do refer to it unless I ask, in all these months." She pulled a chair from under the table and plumped herself down upon it. "I've been thinking a lot this whole weekend."

"I been doing more than thinking," said Buddy, leaning earnestly across the bare enamel tabletop.

She knitted her penciled eyebrows. "Which means?"

He leaned back, as if in assurance. "You just trust me."

She left her quizzical expression as it was.

"Listen, Laverne, I just been with a dead body. That shakes you up on a Monday before lunch. I mean, in a living room it's real creepy, and then some. In a funeral parlor you are prepared."

"Well, I'm among the living, Buddy, though you may not know it."

He put on a lascivious smile. "Baby, how could I forget?" He put his hand across the table, trying to reach a tit, but she drew back.

"Buddy, I'll be glad to give you the conclusion I arrived at," she said coldly.

"Aw, Laverne." He put his face in his bracketed hands, which deformed it slightly, orientalizing his eyes, and tried a bit of japery: "No tickee, no washee." But she stayed stern, pale-faced, and in curlers. "Where's your funnybone today?" he asked. Then: "You got anything for a sandwich?"

"Sure, Buddy, coming right up!" This was said sardonically. She rose, marched to the refrigerator, opened it, and looked inside. "We have one slice of ham sausage. We have a tomato. We have one egg."

Buddy made a disdainful nose. "No kind of real meat?"

"We didn't know we would be serving lunch today, sir," Laverne said, bending to open the hydrator. "We can make a tomato sandwich with lettuce and mayonnaise."

"That's woman's food," Buddy said. "All right, fry me that egg-unless you was saving it for yourself."

"We thank you very much," said Laverne, "but we aren't eating, ourself, because we just weighed ourself and found we was too fat from sitting home here alone all the time with nothing to do but chew candy."

"All right, all right, I feel the needle. Now just be a good girl and fix that egg."

For the first time ever, she fried it hard all the way through, Naomi-style, and the toast that clutched it was butterless and burned almost black. Buddy's mouth felt as if full of dust.

"You wouldn't have a Coke?"

"No, I wouldn't. The order hasn't come yet." She sat across from him again. Now her expression was blank. This was worse, given her passionate nature, than anger, which in time he could always convert into lust.

"Well, some coffee then, Laverne?" On the sibilant a tiny fragment of desiccated toast flew from his lips. "Excuse me," he said loftily, plucking it up.

Like Leo, Laverne had some breakfast coffee still in the pot. Unlike him, she heated it until an unpleasant odor told Buddy it was boiling. Meanwhile she was running water in the sink, as if in impatience to wash the dish on which she had served him the sandwich-which was furthermore a saucer, not a plate. Buddy hated that kind of error, which signified the inattention of the server. Incredulously he watched her compound it: she lifted the saucer, blew the crumbs from it, and put the coffee cup into its well.

Buddy lowered his half-eaten sandwich to the table, pushed his chair back, and stood up. Consulting his watch, he said: "Gee, I forgot nobody's at the lot. I better get back pronto." This was a bluff-calling test. Laverne ordinarily whined if he stayed less than an hour. Nor was there precedent for a visit of whatever length in which he did not plow her within, say, fifteen minutes after arriving.

Now, though, she stood in her old petticoat, holding the marble-enameled coffeepot in one hand and the cup in the other, and said in a tone of eminent reason: "You better do that."

"Yeah, I better," said Buddy and waited for her to surrender. She returned the coffeepot to the stove and put the cup and saucer in the standing water of the sink. She wrung out the string dishcloth and with it swept the crumbs from the tabletop into her free palm. She picked up the garbage from his egg sandwich and went to the trashcan and pedaled its top open.

This was unbearable. "For Christ's sake, Laverne," said Buddy in disbelieving exasperation.

Laverne dropped the rubbish in the can and wiped her hand with the wet gray rag. After the top came down with a clang, she said: "If you was thinking of pussy for dessert, you can forget it."

Buddy let the screendoor slam and thundered down the outside stairs. It was monstrously unfair that he should have to suffer this treatment only now that he had hired a killer. She had caused no real trouble in all the months he had done nothing. As usual when he was the victim of an injustice Buddy soon felt defenseless, and in this case he couldn't go to Laverne for succor, as he had done when felled by Ballbacher's sucker punch.