Quiet Death

[dori_bell]

The blonde girl sat on the top step outside the Guardian Angel cathedral. She wore mourning blue, dark and conservative: a pleated skirt, a clean blouse with a tailored jacket buttoned too high, a wide-brimmed hat. She had pinned a wilted mum to her lapel. She tilted her face to the church with its stained glass windows illuminated from within. A night service carried on. She heard singing, an organ. It was a place of grief strangely juxtaposed against a celebratory city. On the high stone steps, people often remarked about the general lack of respect shown by tourists as they motored past the sanctuary. Dori smoked a cigarette and watched traffic crawl by. Her knees were pressed together but there was a view up her skirt if you got the right angle. White panties worn with no hose. Someone honked. Her gaze darted and flickered like a bird’s, but she didn’t adjust her ankles.

Sometimes she came to these things. People asked her how she knew so-and-such and vague answers sufficed. Dori knew them from the neighborhood, from school, from volunteering at the hospital… she could pick up all sorts of life details from an obit. She looked nonthreatening and half the time, people tuned out her answers because they had only asked to be polite, to show some semblance of proper decorum.

It was warm tonight. She considered peeling off her jacket and blouse and sitting there in a thin undershirt, where she would be mistaken for a half-dressed drunk. Someone would offer to walk her home, and maybe they’d be decent and do so, or maybe they’d steer her into a gritty corner to take advantage. Once she had taken a life that way… let him feel her up, exclaim over her innocence, and then –

Pffft

– she crumpled her fist and his life sifted away like dirt through her fingers. Quietly.

Dori scraped her shoe against the concrete and listened to the music from a car's open windows.

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[v_harkryder]

Virgil was raised Baptist. Sophie Harkryder was a devout churchgoer even now that she was in her eighties, and when her children were little she'd insisted they scrub up and get dressed for services every Sunday whether they liked it or not. His mother yelling up the stairs, "Anyone who isn't down here in five minutes is gonna get left!" was a profound memory of childhood.

The war had changed his views on religion, and after he returned home from Vietnam he dabbled in other faiths and explored their belief systems. Looking for something to make the world make sense again. With therapy and the help of friends and family, he'd gradually re-discovered his balance in life. Church was part of that.

Besides, he liked the hymns.

The funeral was for Dean Cayhall, who'd operated a gas station near the gym. He and Virgil had known one another casually, talking over the occasional beer after work and getting together with other people for basketball on weekends. They'd been roughly the same age, so the death had left the veteran a bit shaken and wanting to pay his respects. A heart attack, for the Lord's sake.

The family had filled the first two pews, Dean's wife and three kids lined up like ducks on the unpadded bench. The minister had clearly known the deceased well, and he'd spoken warmly to the bereaved. As the people attending the gathering rose to their feet when the service ended, Virgil adjusted his coat on his broad shoulders and went to speak to Rachel and her children.

He was relieved to be out in the open air once people began to disperse, and he rubbed the back of his neck. An elderly couple were shuffling ahead of him, and he waited patiently while they navigated their way down the stairs. There was a blonde sitting nearby and puffing on a cigarette. Friend? Family member?

"Evenin'," Virgil said. "I guessed I missed giving you my condolences."