Free The Church of Dead Girls by Stephen Dobyns

could call it that.”
    â€œWas it just the sex that, you know, kept you seeing her?”
    â€œIf it was just that, I’d have already forgotten her. She was a wonderful woman: funny, energetic. Hell, I’d have been happy to hang around her even without the sex.”
    â€œBut you’ll stay out of it?”
    â€œI can’t get her out of my mind. She had a cranberry mark right below her navel. I see it all the time. I’m not going to get Schmidt mad at me, but I’ll keep my mind on it. If she was killed by someone in Aurelius, I’ll find out.”
    â€œAnd what will you do about it?”
    â€œI’ve got to let my feelings settle. When I went into her house that morning, I hadn’t been there for months. I recognized the smells and on top of those smells was this other smell, her death smell. She was on the floor, her face all blue and her eyes rolled up. I used to kiss that face. I don’t know if you can imagine seeing the face of the woman you love like that. The awfulness of her dead face.” Then Ryan remembered Michelle in the next room and he felt abashed and became silent.
    â€”
    Aaron came back from Buffalo for the funeral. He was a senior in college, majoring in mathematics. He didn’t stay at his father’s house, but at Gillian’s Motel. People were struck by this. If he had wanted, he could have stayed with many people, but he chose to stay at the motel. And he was obvious about it, not that he should hide it, but he mentioned it to people, as if staying at Gillian’s made a kind of statement.
    Paula had come back as well and stayed with her father. I hadn’t seen her for some years and she had grown quite beautiful. She certainly had not been unattractive before, but she had exchanged her teenage prettiness for a womanliness. She was tall and thin, with wavy black hair that hung past her shoulders. And she wore glasses with large round lenses. She had finished her master’s degree at Binghamton and was working for IBM.
    The funeral was held at Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church. Patrick sat in front with Paula. Aaron sat across the aisle and a few rows behind with a cousin who had come from Scarsdale. The church was crowded. Of course there were Janice’s colleagues from the pharmaceutical company in Norwich, as well as some relatives, even several neighbors. But many people went out of curiosity. Along with Ryan Tavich, who sat with Franklin, there were a number of men in the church, some alone, and it was impossible not to speculate that these men had been involved with Janice.
    Janice had been cremated, and on a stand at the front of the church rested a white cardboard box about the right size for a corsage. It was amazing to think its contents had been powerful enough to turn the hearts of so many men topsy-turvy. Around the stand were asters, lilies, and roses, hundreds of roses. McHugh’s Flower Shop on Jefferson Street was quite sold out and flowers were sent from as far away as Utica. Even this was amazing, in that the volume of flowers exceeded the volume of the little white box by about a thousand to one. And it was hard not to imagine that the box contained not her ashes but her heart.
    Father John conducted the service and Eunice Duncan played the organ. Bach, I think. Father John spoke of Janice’s career as a scientist, of her being a woman active on the frontiers of medicine, though, as I say, she was no more than a technician. He spoke of the tragedy that Janice had been taken from our community so violently. He spoke of her energy and good humor. He spoke of her warm and loving nature. In truth, that was the only remark which, by the farthest stretch of the imagination, might have referred to her men friends.
    A certain tension arose from the suspicion that Janice’s murderer was in the church at that moment. Ryan kept looking around and there were plainclothesmen in evidence, including one in the organ