Calloustown Read Online Free Page B

they come out here to help us, the next thing you know our rates will go up.”
    There were no clouds in the sky. I reached down at my slightly wet balls and jerked my khakis left and right a few times. I said, “Don’t do this again, honey. Please don’t do this.”
    One time we had a hailstorm that damaged our roof and cars mercilessly, but Mella wouldn’t call the insurance agent seeing as it would jack our bill.
    She cried. She got out her cell phone, though, and flipped it open. “I don’t know Triple A’s number,” she said. “Here.”
    What did I know? I punched up my buddy Aaron the actuary, seeing as I knew his number, but I learned that we were in a place with no bars. We were stuck in a “fuck you for trying to contact the outside world” kind of place.
    â€œMan, we need to find a payphone or something.” I thought, when’s the last time I saw a payphone? I thought, Mella ought to buy up payphones and sell them on eBay. I said, “Please don’t cry. I’ll go inside.”
    â€œI’m not going to wait out here in the parking lot of the dead. The parking lot of people who wait to go see the dead. The parking lot.”
    I doubt I have to go into much detail or speculation about what might happen to an orgasmic-by-sadness woman walk ing into an institution of embalmment. I’d learned to live by the “we probably won’t see these people again” dictum long before. I said, “Let’s go see if they got a landline.”
    Funeral homes in the South, for the most part, do not vary. This was a big antebellum structure with a foyer and four viewing areas that had one time been parlors of sorts. The family lived upstairs, I supposed, and the bodies first showed up downstairs, just like in the movies that caused my wife to cry. I said, “Anyone home?” like people do.
    My wife and I held hands.
    Listen, the stereotypical mortician didn’t come out from behind some curtains there at the Glymph Funeral Home. I don’t know where he’d been standing before, but he plain appeared. He said, “Are you here for the Munson services?” And like that, I jumped. And Mella began laughing. Laughing! What kind of weird dyslexia is that? Right away I thought back about to how she and I had never been to a funeral service together—both our parents seemed needful to crank onward to the age of 140 or thereabouts, something I’d never have predicted as an actuary, and was glad that they all had different supplemental health insurance policies than the one offered by my company.
    I said, “No,” after making a noise that might’ve sounded like “Muhhh!” according to Mella. “No, it seems that every belt under my hood popped at the same time and our cell phones aren’t working for some reason.”
    The funeral home director said, in that quiet voice always used by funeral home directors—what did their college football team’s cheerleaders sound like?—“You’re early for the Munson viewing. His family’s receiving friends at two o’clock.”
    Mella shook her head. She laughed again, but she said, “I was so sorry to hear about Mr. Munson. Tragic, really.”
    I said, “My name’s Tenry,” and stuck out my hand. I’d never shaken hands with a funeral home director, and I wanted to see if his hand felt dry and scaly from all the embalming fluid. It didn’t. “No, we’re not here for the Munson thing. I was wondering if we could use your phone.” I looked at my wristwatch. We had an hour.
    â€œHarold Glymph,” he said. “I see. I’m sorry. I was preoccupied. There’s some talk that there might be a little bit of a brouhaha at the viewing. Nelroy Munson’s widow has reason to believe that…well, you know, seeing as where Nelroy had his heart attack.”
    Mella said, “Who could blame