His memorial service was at noon, but Reena had to wait for her delivery. The Abbot would understand. “Business,” he once told her, “is like getting into bed with a woman. You go out of your way to land the deal, but once it’s over, you can fuck it over.” Misogyny aside, the Abbot was a good man, and Reena didn’t think he’d hold a grudge now. Then she remembered that he once claimed, “If I get killed, I’m haunting that place and those motherfuckers.” But the Abbot hadn’t been murdered. In the end, undercooked barbeque, which led to sal monella poisoning, killed the Abbot Keith. Reena had always told him that pork would be the death of him.
She took inventory of her supplies while waiting for UPS to show. She had enough rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide to last another cook, but would need more before the next. Damn. She was just at the drugstore this morning.
The doorbell interrupted her, and she was glad. The service started in ten minutes; she would be lucky to make it before it started.
“Package for Reena Sanghavi?” She had a buzz cut, and each knee appeared to have swallowed a grapefruit. The driver – the delivery dyke – looked Reena over as she hastily signed her initials. Reena felt her skin crawl in discomfort and embarrassment, tiny ants burrowing into pores all over her body.
“Thank you,” Reena mumbled, and shut the door in a hurry. The Abbot awaited.
Reena missed getting on the train by a few moments, and she stood looking at the gaping and triumphant faces flash by until the only thing left in the station was herself and a hobo sleeping under a pile of tattered newspapers.
Great. Fucking great. Now you’re going to be lucky to slip in halfway through the service. How’s that for paying your respects to the man who taught you everything. He made you your first kit, remember? And he held your hand through your cooks for two months before you got the rhythm down.
The bum shifted under his gray paper bedspread and sat up suddenly. Reena absent-mindedly took half a dozen steps in the other direction. She began to mutter “slope” under her breath to relieve the anxiety bubbling over. It had been her favorite word since high school, and it was usually the only thing that could keep Reena from having panic attacks. Pot could probably help, but she was already too paranoid. Finally, the train blew into the station, bringing hot air and sweaty commuters with it.
After the darkness of the subway tunnel, the sun nearly blinded her as she ran up the steps to the street. But it was the heat of the city that made Reena stop when it blasted her at the entrance to the street. She tried to walk as fast as she could without giving herself a heat stroke. She passed a group of small children, cheeks flushed, one nearly purple with exertion, another who had a wrench clutched in his fingers. He couldn’t be much older than Reena’s brother. But today was supposed to be about the Abbott, so Reena pushed everyone else out of her mind.
By the time she got to the home, the service was over. She had missed her chance. The only mourners left were a couple of cigarettes lying on the steps to the entrance. But she still had to pick up the Abbot. He had prepared her for this a long time ago. “Nothing personal. You just keep your shit cleaner than anyone I know. I wanna be well dusted in my next life.”
The Abbot learned about Buddhism in the Haight, where his white hippie girlfriend had convinced him to drive to one night, stoned, two thousand miles. He didn’t really want to go to San Francisco, but she was cute and had the tiniest ass he’d ever seen in his life, so he stole a green Buick and they headed west, smoking joints the whole way. By Omaha he couldn’t stand the way she said “Jefferson Airplane.” When they stopped for breakfast in Boulder, she confessed that his lack of commitment to free love freaked her out. So when they finally, finally hit the fog-soaked city, they split and never crossed paths again. Which was fine with him.
And while the Haight-Ashbury was drenched in plenty of drugs, it was speed that seemed easiest to get hooked on, and even easier to get a hold of, because people were making it in their kitchens and sending it to his neighborhood. And it didn’t matter if one customer died or went back home, there were always three more to take his place, because overnight seventy-five thousand kids arrived, and a lot of them depressed runaways. Living there taught him one of the basic fundamentals of the business – not in a recession, not during a war, not during any catastrophe would business dry up, because these events breed depression, and when people are depressed, they turn to substances to escape. Fuck things like peace, love, and the Beatles – the Abbot Keith was, deep down, eternally, a hustler, and hustlers operate on the outside of what most people think of when they contemplate life.
His ashes had been vacuum-sealed and nestled into a small cardboard box. How they got a three hundred and fifty pound man into a box that Reena could hold in one hand was a mystery, but cremation is a powerful process. She tucked the Abbot into her messenger bag. She thanked the manager of the funeral home. His droopy Basset hound eyes gave her the sexual heebie jeebies.
Reena paused as she left the building and again faced the hot trek back to the west side. She blew out a breath in frustration. Even in death, the Abbot made her do pointless shit; surely his ashes could’ve been FedExed?
“Come on, you pain in the ass,” Reena mumbled. Hopefully she wouldn’t miss the train back. Slope . . . slope . . . slope . . . slope . . .
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