Free The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston

cheek on my shoulder.
    —I doubt they could get hit with anything over there.
    She started to put the nut in her mouth.
    I turned back to the bookcase.
    —But then again, this is my second day on the job and I'm the same lame fucker who made fun of how your dad wasted himself. So you might not want to listen to someone so clearly retarded.
    She dropped the nut back in the bowl.
    —Yeah, you got a point.
    She got off the chair and walked over to me and looked at the books.
    I misted them again and she reached out and touched the tip of her finger to a white spot that had appeared on a photograph on one of the shelves: a sunburned man with a thick moustache, large arms and shoulders, standing on a dock next to a striped marlin, well over 200 pounds, hanging from a tackle rig.
    —Damnit. Goddamn it.
    —What the fuck are you doing?
    I helped Po Sin muscle the bagged and gutted mattress down the hall to the front door.
    —Working.
    He stopped, pausing in front of the door that led into the den, watching the girl as she took several books down from the shelves and boxed them.
    —Looks to me like
she's
working.
    He looked at me again, shook his head, and backed toward the front door and out into the sun.
    We leaned the mattress against the van and I pointed back at the house.
    —She wanted to go through them herself. She said she didn't want to keep the fabric-covered ones because she could see some of the marks.
    Po Sin rested his ass in the open back door of the van and it dropped on its shocks.
    —Fuck
that.
I mean, what are you doing
talking
with her?
    I raised my hands over my head.
    —You said talk to her!
    —I said apologize, I didn't say engage in a damn
tête-à-tête
with her.
    —She wanted to talk, man. What am I supposed to say?
Oh, miss, so sorry, my boss is a total prick and will freak out if I have a conversation with you in your own house while you're grieving the loss of your father who just killed himself. Maybe you should take this dime and go call someone who's allowed to give a fuck.
    Po Sin turned his head and looked through the ranked cedars to the clogged traffic on the PCH.
    —Gonna take forever to get home.
    I kicked a rock.
    —Yeah.
    He pushed himself up, the van bounced, free of ballast.
    —Giving a fuck, Web, that's not exactly the MO you've been working under for some time now.
    I watched traffic.
    Po Sin watched it, too.
    —And people in her situation, they are prone to acting in ways they would not under normal circumstances. Start doing shit like talking to the help about their personal tragedies. Situation like that can become quickly awkward. People can all of a sudden realize they are not acting like themselves and freak out on everyone around them. And people employed to eliminate evidence that their loved ones ever existed can make attractive targets when they lash out. And that can make the job much more difficult than it needs to be. And this is my livelihood here. My business that I built from the ground up. And I don't need to have it getting all fucked up because some shell-shocked young woman mistakes your disinterest in pretty much anything for some kind of blasé charm, and ends up getting more deeply injured than she already is and has an inevitable emotional detonation and refuses to pay her fucking bill. I have enough problems, thank you.
    —Don't worry, I know he's a disaffected asshole. No danger of me getting sucked into his emotional black hole or anything.
    We turned from the traffic.
    She stood at the top of the driveway, wind blowing her hair across her face and rippling the hem of her knee-length black jersey dress, a box of books in her arms.
    —So you guys want to look and see if you want any of these?
    …
    —You sure?
    —Yeah, of course. No, wait.
    I stood away from the box of books I was sliding into the back of the van and she reached in and pulled one out.
    —Not this one.
    I looked at the title.
    —You like that?
    She looked at it herself.
    —No,