Bodova is the Only Thing That Makes Me Feel Human

By the time Bodova reached the Departures level, the oyster in her coat pocket had begun to weep, soaking her shirtfront with briny tears. The wet fabric clung to her chest when she opened her coat to produce the oyster, a small, intricate, six-figure-precious timepiece I had given to her after lifting it from the pocket of the widow’s sister as she reached for a spoonful of green bean casserole from a chafing dish at the buffet downstairs. It was time.

The widow sat shielded from the the death-seekers and rubberneckers behind a freshly-cut windrow, her hunched back dwarfed by the towering stained-glass window depicting the gaping maw that awaits us all. She wore a crown so tall its feathers pushed at the cathedral ceiling, and as she tilted her head, their tips dragged through the nicotine-stained shadows above her.

She was eating water ice with a runcible spoon, weeping into the cup as fast as she was emptying it, looking occupied to avoid the eyes of the bereaved standing in a tight circle around her, nodding in agreement at the various barely-distinct ways each could offer to the tune of “death is not the end.” My watch was in the casket, wrapped around the dead man’s wrist.

Bodova sat in the chair farthest from the widow, at the far end of a yellow carpet, working the flesh from a peach stone feverishly. Her lips shone with juice.

The peach stone appeared suddenly between her lips and the mourners all stopped nodding at once and turned to look. It dropped from her lips.

She caught it in her open palm, closed her fingers over it, stood, and walked to the widow beneath the window behind the windrow, stooped and placed the stone on the floor at her feet. The widow stared at the top of Bodova’s head but said nothing. Bodova stood, looking down at the widow motionless in mourning, and waited.

I walked to the end of the yellow carpet, stopped at the chair Bodova had occupied, her scent still hanging in the air. I looked down at the seat of the chair. In the center was a wet spot, still slowly spreading toward the edge.

I had come up here to identify some body. There was a photograph in my jacket pocket, softened by sweat, gray with age, two names written on the back: Bodova struck through and next to it Bovada. Of course. I was Bodova’s tail. I moved in.

I watched as she pick up the stone from the floor and press it firmly into the widow’s hand open in her lap. Along the walls of the cathedral, plaster mouths opened and shut among blue and purple leaves. Mourners had pressed rubies into the open mouths. The mouths cried for more.

The widow’s dress was yellow silk, darkened across the chest where tears had spilled. The cloth tight across her stomach trembled with her jagged breathing. There was a ladder in one stocking and I followed it farther than I ought to have, up past the yellow hem, Jacob’s ladder through the shadowed gap between her thighs. Fourth floor. Arrivals. A memory of a pram parked too close to the top of a staircase. The room sighed. I shut my eyes.

I opened my eyes and Bodova stood before me. She gestured for my hand. I held it up and she pulled it greedily toward her, studying the tobacco stains on the middle finger where they met the pale ghost of my lost wedding ring. I could feel the peach juice sticky on her thumb as it wandered over my knuckles and stopped at the one that had never healed. She pulled the oyster from her pocket again. “It’s time,” she said.

Behind her the room held it’s breath. Departures was a limitlessness. My knees hurt. I’d been on my feet far too long. Bodova pressed her thumb into the damaged knuckle. The pain was lightning. I could put an address to it. October, a service entrance, the dead man laughing through bloody teeth while I hit him with a broken hand. Sweat soaked through my shirt. She pulled my hand toward her mouth. I wanted to explain something before she got it there.

There was no time. The peach stone rolled a quarter turn in the widow’s palm. Deep in its grooves, wet flesh glistened. Bodova’s tongue cradled the broken knuckle.The oyster in her pocket wept. I stood, my hand at her mouth, her tongue on my knuckle, waiting.

When the room breathed again I could think: how I was going to get into that casket and get my watch off that wrist

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