Can't Get Enough of Your Love by J.J. Murray

wouldn’t believe how much it costs if you wait until someone dies, and we only take cash then.”
    I blinked. “How much?”
    â€œA couple thousand.”
    D-damn.
    â€œAs the script says”—he cleared his throat—”your cost is always much, much less if you plan ahead.”
    â€œTo be dead,” I added.
    He smiled. “Yeah.”
    â€œUm, isn’t it kind of, well, creepy to bring death into people’s houses?”
    He nodded. “I get a lot of doors slammed in my face.”
    What a crummy job
, I thought,
but he has to be paid pretty well
. “How does a person get your job, Roger?” I asked.
    â€œI was born into it.” He sighed. “It’s a family business.”
    â€œOh.” In a way, I was glad. I mean, if Roger had actually gone to some school to learn how to plant people, I would have been even more freaked out. “Um, what happens if your cemetery, um, runs out of space?”
    He squared his shoulders and changed his voice to someone older. “At the present rate of interment, Fairview should have burial space well into the twenty-second century.”
    Creepier.
    â€œThat’s what my father tells people.”
    â€œAnd you just … go door-to-door like this?”
    â€œWhen the weather’s nice. And if I’m not doing this, I’m putting flowers out on graves—you know, the graves of those whose families have forgotten them.”
    â€œThat’s sweet.”
    â€œA lot of people forget. But mostly, I am the perpetual-care man, cutting the grass and trimming around the graves. I also assist my father at interments. Pretty soon I’ll be supervising interments on my own.”
    That has to be the hardest job of all! All that pain and sorrow, maybe daily, and, what, there may be three or four funerals some days? It made me appreciate dealing with developmentally handicapped kids a lot more. All I have to do is push a wheelchair, help a kid feed himself or herself, or make sure they get in and out of the bathroom okay. Roger has to watch people at their lowest, their most grief-stricken.
    â€œI’ve taken up too much of your time,” he said, and he stood, all six feet of him.
    I like a man who’s taller than I am, and I especially like a man who has a sense of humor. He was someone I could talk to, unlike Karl or Juan Carlos, so I had toget him to come back. “My mama might be interested.” I knew she wouldn’t be interested at all, but at least I’d get to see him again.
    He took out a little notepad. “How old is your mother?”
    I blinked.
    â€œSorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
    â€œNo, it’s all right. I suppose you have to ask. Mama is pushing fifty, but she looks much older.”
    He wrote it down. “I’ll have to come back before it’s too late, then.”
    I nodded, biting my lip to keep myself from smiling.
    â€œIs there, um, a Mr. Cole?”
    â€œNo. He doesn’t live with us. Um, can you come back later tonight?” I didn’t want to be with Karl two nights in a row, and Juan Carlos was working too late again, so I thought … why not?
    â€œSure.”
    â€œAround seven.”
    He smiled. “Seven. See you later, Lana.”
    I tripped all through dinner with Mama, asking her all sorts of questions.
    â€œHow are you feeling, Mama?”
    â€œFine, just fine.”
    â€œHow’s your blood pressure?”
    She looked up from her greens at me. “Normal.”
    â€œThey check you for diabetes every time you go, right?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou haven’t, um, gone through the change yet, have you?”
    â€œNo. What’s this about?”
    â€œNothing.”
    When the doorbell rang at seven—Roger is a punctual man, too—I burst out of the kitchen to the front door. I returned to the kitchen with my hand firmly grasping Roger’s arm.
    â€œMama?”
    Lots of