Free Obituary Writer (9780547691732) by Porter Shreve Page A

service industry, it was a particularly good service. It was quite serviceable." He laughed.
    "I see," I said, quickly scanning the room for Alicia or Margaret or anyone to help explain what I hadn't realized about Joe.
    "Is Alicia here?" I asked.
    "I like Alicia. She has pretty hair, and she gives me treats." He wrinkled his nose. "They're treats for dogs. You can't eat these kinds of treats. They're disgusting to eat."
    Joe reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of dog snacks, and I saw for the first time that he was dressed in work clothes: heavy boots and a pair of navy Dickies and a gray shirt with mud streaked on it. Someone must have lent him the blazer he was wearing.
    "You're in the service industry?" I offered, indulging him because his outfit and his mustache, so conspicuously dyed, and his labored enthusiasm made me sad.
    "I'm in the industrious industry," he said. "I'm very industrious. You can ask anyone."
    Joe carried on in this way, and I learned that he worked for Clyde, the breeder who had spoken at the funeral, on a farm up near Winfield. He gave me all the names of Arthur's dogs and the prizes they'd won, speaking in the most cheerful manner, pausing only to push his glasses up his nose or take a two-handed sip of his drink, and I began to wonder if a person like Joe would be capable of feeling sadness.
    "Arthur worked in a bank. He has my arrowhead on his desk," he said at one point, speaking of Arthur in both the past and present tense, giving no indication that he understood the loss.
    Joe spotted Alicia first. She was huddled in a far corner of the room speaking with the woman in the tweed suit from the morning. The wolfhound lay at her feet with a despondent look.
    "Margaret's at the hotel, because she hates Alicia." He nudged me. "She said she was going to the service and that's that. 'That's that,' she said. Excuse me, I need to go to the bathroom."
    Before he left, I asked him where Margaret was staying and gave him my phone number in case he ever wanted to call, realizing as I was writing it down that this was probably a mistake.
    On the way out I noticed that Alicia and the dog were now engaged in what appeared to be a serious conversation. She was looking down at the floor, scratching the dog's face in long, slow strokes from the tip of his nose to the back of his head. His eyes blinked and closed, a contented smile set on his grizzled face.
    I started toward them, then hesitated, suddenly tense, deciding we could catch up later. And after a couple of mini ham sandwiches and some oversweet punch, I briefly complimented Reverend Johnson on the service and left Whispering Pines.

    Out on the highway, the road was empty, the slow lane all mine, and I rolled the windows down to take in some of the cool October air.
    Somehow, it had been an exhilarating day. I didn't know what it meant to fall in love, couldn't remember how it had felt with Thea, except that at the time it was safer than "falling." I'd always been a cautious person, alert to the dangers of the world. But falling was the sense I had of things now.
    I couldn't get Alicia out of my mind—in her hat at the funeral, in her burgundy dress, her small hand reaching out, fast forward across my line of vision. Her voice kept turning over in my head. I thought of Czechoslovakia, of where I'd go for lunch tomorrow, of who I'd be five years from now, every possibility colored by thoughts of Alicia, as if we had made an arrangement together, as if she were somehow mine to consider and not the bereaved widow of Arthur Whiting. I knew it was crazy, but there she was, playing on me.
    Back home, I threw my jacket on the couch and checked the answering machine. The message light read 2.
    I listened to the long squeal of the machine rewinding, wondering why Alicia would have left two messages and figured the first one had been cut off. I worried she might be upset that I didn't talk to her at the reception.
    "This is your mother," the