Free Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral by Kris Radish

died.
    And even longer than that.

8

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    “Shit.”
    This favorite word that passed across the lips of Rebecca was like dessert to her. No matter where she was or what happened, just saying the word “shit” made her somehow feel better.
    “Some people think it’s filthy because someone told them it was a dirty word,” she told someone at least twice a day. “But ‘shit’ gets me through. I say it and it makes me smile. I can’t stop it or help myself. I love ‘shit.’ ”
    That made her laugh too.
    “I love shit.”
    “Say it,” she would tell people, some of them people Rebecca had never met but happened to be sitting next to, or sharing a meal with at a convention, or parked next to at a busy intersection. “Just say it and see what happens.”
    Mostly people laughed too because a fairly attractive, kind-looking and gentle-speaking—well, except for that “shit” word—woman who appeared sort of harmless, looked her age (which was fifty-three), was talking to them about a word that most people perceived as being from the Swear Family.
    Rebecca was swearing when the phone rang. She was saying something worse than “shit.” A word that has become as acceptable as part of everyday verbiage in many cultures but a word that even she was loath to speak out loud. Except when the phone was ringing when she did not really want to answer it. Except when she was wanting to lie down and sleep and yet was seemingly waiting for something else to happen. One more thing. One more shitty thing.
    “What?” she asked herself out loud as she picked up the phone and then asked it again without waiting for some kind of reply or question in return.
    “What? What the shit do you want?”
    Katherine laughs. She should have expected this. This is Rebecca. Katherine knows this. She does. She knows about the “shit” and the somewhat messy life, like shit itself, and the way Rebecca often talks in questions because she is always going someplace and she is always in a hurry and in a shitty mess. She imagines Rebecca who just about always wears flip-flops, has refused to dye her hair, loves huge earrings and men’s tailored shirts, dressed just like that and with her hand cradling the phone between her chin and chest.
    “Hey, Rebecca, it’s Katherine Givins. How are you?”
    “What the hell?”
    Katherine laughs again. She can’t help it and then her mind launches into one of those tired, kind-of-hysterical places because she has been up now for a very long period of time and she is manic at best and getting worse. Rebecca’s predictableness makes her laugh and she quickly stops herself from sketching out the rest of the conversation.
    “Just hearing your shitty voice makes me want to laugh. Annie would like that.”
    Rebecca laughs, too, just hearing her response, and then quickly flies into a place that brings her out of orbit very fast. It is their connection. How they know each other. Why they may be speaking on the phone this very second.
    Annie.
    How she misses Annie.
    “Katherine Givins,” Rebecca says. “Of course I know who you are,” she adds, acknowledging a name, then a woman, then a parade of memories that come marching toward her before she can think to get out of their way.
    “Oh my God . . .” she manages to say and then Katherine gives her a minute.
    She gives her a minute because she knows who Rebecca Carlson is and was and always will be. She knows how Annie moved in next door to Rebecca in 1993 following six months of heated and sometimes hilarious and frequently shitty debate about the price of the piece of the land—money which Rebecca needed desperately but would never admit so—and the location of the house that was to be built and its height and the landscaping until Rebecca was about to suggest and then demand the placement of stones up the driveway and Annie finally said, “No, damn it, no. You let go, woman. You let me be your neighbor and take my money and let me share your