"What's eating Rube?" George asked Bob after they were clear of the restaurant.

"Don't know."

"Not something you did?"

"It's not always something I did," Bob said. He seemed exasperated.

"Okay, fine," said George. "I can just tell that something is eating him, but I'm not sure what it is."

"Well, he does want to have another meeting bright and early tomorrow morning."

"Yeah, but that's not unusual," said George. "How come you came in with him?"

"He was waiting for me after my meeting," said Bob matter-of-factly.

"You're going to meetings, now?"

"It's not a big deal."

"I think it is. Congratulations, Bob."

"Yeah." Bob seemed embarrassed.

"So what does the sticky say?" George asked in order to change the subject.

"It says, 'F. Markarian, Moe's Tavern, 1902 Mulberry Street, ETD 6:57 PM'."

"Holy shit, Bob!" said George. "Couldn't Rube have handed that to somebody else? Shit, I'll do it for you, if you want. You can wait outside."

"Nah. Rube sent you with me to hold my hand, but I got this. You can wait outside if you want. It's not your usual place, right?"

"What do you think my usual place is?" asked George.

"You know, a lesbo bar."

"And we were just getting along so well," said George.

They walked in silence for a while. The bar was only a couple of blocks away, and it was 6:30. They had plenty of time.

"What was that last name?" asked George.

"Markarian," said Bob.

"What kind of name is that?"

"It's a Markarian name, sir," said Bob.

"Huh?" said George.

"You never read 'Catch 22', did you?" said Bob.

"You're only the second person today to remind me that I haven't read all the books I should have. But, seriously, what kind of a name is Markarian."

"Armenian, probably. They always end in 'ian' or 'yan'. Don't know why."

"So it isn't somebody you know," said George.

"I don't know every alcoholic," said Bob.

When they got to the bar, Bob opened the door for George, but as she hesitated just inside, he passed her and began walking up and down the bar behind the patrons. George supposed that he was trying to guess who F. Markarian was.

"Can I help you, Mac?" asked the bartender.

"No need, Fred," Bob replied.

"Hey," said Fred, "do I know you?"

"Ah, not really," said Bob. He and George looked at each other and then simultaneously checked out the liquor license on the wall behind the bar. In illegible letters, the licensee was named as "Frederick M-something."

"He is somebody you know, sorta," whispered George.

"I only knew his first name."

"Yeah, that's what Mason says about his connections, too."

"I was a customer here a long time ago," Bob told Fred. "I've been away a long time. No reason you'd remember me. But I remember you. Say, I never asked this, but how come the sign says 'Moe's' but your name is Fred?"

"Bought it twenty years ago from a guy named Moe. Never changed it."

"That makes sense. Say, didn't you once tell me that you're Armenian?"

"I might have," said Fred. "Are you Armenian, too?"

"Me? Nah," Bob did not have this down quite yet. He paused too long, but he finally followed through. "Markarian isn't it?"

"Hey, you got a good memory," said Fred. He was warming to the attention. Go in for the kill, thought George. She immediately regretted the terminology, but, glancing at the time on her Smartphone, she saw that now was the time for Bob to act.

"Can I shake your hand?" said Bob, extending his.

Fred thought about it just a second before he set down the cloth he was using to wipe the bar. "Why not?" He put out his hand and Bob took it. George saw the shimmer as Fred's soul left through his arm.

"How come you went away?" asked Fred.

"I been on the wagon," said Bob as he checked his watch.

"Oh, glad you said something, because I was just about to offer you a drink on the house."

"No, don't bother."

"Wouldn't have been any bother. Just a minute." Fred turned his attention to a man who was hoveringly close to resting his cheek in his spilled drink. "You've had enough, Mac. I'm cutting you off."

Suddenly, the customer became both animated and hostile. "Don't tell me what to do!" he sneered. "I'm sick of people telling me what to do. My whole life everybody tells me what to do." At least that was what George thought he was saying. It was hard to tell because he slurred every other word and sometimes did not make several words in a row comprehensible."

"Okay, Mac," said Fred, stepping back and raising his palms toward the unruly customer to show that he had no ill intent.

"Oh, now you wanna handle me, huh?" said the man. He glanced around and grabbed by the neck a full beer bottle that was in front of the man next to him and smashed its end loudly on the inside edge of the bar. Shards flew everywhere. Beer sloshed onto the bar and, especially, the floor behind the bar. George saw a graveling appear behind the bar and leap from one bottle to another, jostling each of them in mid flight. The critter looked right at George and snarled. Same to you, buddy, she thought.

"Take that!" slurred the drunk as he poked the broken bottle toward Fred.

Bob's hands opened and closed as if he wanted to interfere.

"We're not allowed to do anything," said George in a low voice as she sidled up to Bob.

"Didn't I just do something?" said Bob. George knew it was hard for reapers not to feel responsible.

Fred backed into the shelves to stay away from the broken bottle, causing the already tippy liquor bottles to come down in a chain reaction reminiscent of bowling pins: Some bottles would not have rained down if they had not been hit by other bottles. In reaction, Fred stepped forward, momentarily more afraid of the mighty crash of the falling bottles than of the one in the drunk's hand, but, as soon as he did, he slipped in the spilled beer from the drunk's bottle and went down on his back.

The drunk staggered away from the bar and dropped his weapon with another crash.

"Look!" called somebody who had grabbed the inner edge of the bar and pulled himself forward so he could look down at Fred. "There's blood and broken glass all over the floor back here!"

"Somebody call 9-1-1!" cried someone else.

Some men made a semicircle around the drunk and tried to grab him, but he grabbed for another bottle from the table behind him and was about to break it when Bob elbowed aside the men in the semicircle and punched the drunk so hard that he went straight down and stayed there on the floor. Bob bent over and miraculously caught the falling beer bottle before it hit the floor. He set it back on the table in front of the awed customer who, no doubt, had thought that she would never see it again.

"Don't drink that right away," said Bob to the customer. "It's all foamed up and needs time to settle."

"You didn't have to do that," said George.

"Yeah, I did," said Bob. "It was the least I could do for Fred."

"You did him a bigger favor by taking his soul out before he died. All that broken glass in his back would have cramped his style in the afterlife."

"I know," said Bob. "It's been explained to me, but it doesn't feel much like I did him a favor."

"Who did who a favor?" said a man behind them. When George and Bob turned around, there was Fred, or the essence of Fred.

"Walk with us," said Bob. He walked to the door and opened it. Fred could have walked through the closed door, but Bob obviously didn't want to let that happen, having been taught by George that it usually freaked out the newly dead. Fred went to step through the open doorway but turned to look at Bob midway.

"Did I just die?"

"Yeah, Fred, you just did."

By the time they got out on the sidewalk, the ambulance had pulled up to the curb with its siren blaring. EMTs seemingly burst out of every door and went into the bar.

"You know," said Fred, "in this light you do look familiar. What's your name?"

"Bob."

"Yeah, yeah. You're a cop, right?"

"I was."

"Oh, now I remember! Didn't you get hit by a beer truck?"

"That was me," said Bob. He turned to George. "I got this, George. I told you."

"You did good, Bob," George said. She stood on the sidewalk and watched Bob lead Fred away. Presently, some vision of lights was going to appear – maybe The Great Beer Keg or a neon tavern sign in the sky – and Fred was going to go into it and disappear. George had seen enough of those light shows not to need to see another. Besides, Charlotte was getting off work at 7:30, and George did not have much time to get there.

"Sorry I'm late," said George.

"No worries," said Charlotte as she gave her girlfriend a peck on the lips. "You want some coffee?"

"No thanks. Tonight I'd just like to spend some quiet time with somebody I am deeply fond of," said George.

"Tell me who the bitch is," said Charlotte. "I'll scratch her eyes out."

"Please, don't do that to yourself!" said George, making a face of mock alarm. They locked eyes and brought their faces so close together that their lips nearly touched, but they didn't.

"Get a room, you two," said a male barista, who was nice-looking for a skinny dude, though he had thick-lensed glasses and unruly black hair sticky out from under his cap.

"Go to hell, Flaco," said Charlotte good-naturedly, but her eyes just smiled at George.

"How did you spend your evening?" asked Rube the next morning at Der Waffle Haus. George was having her favorite meal. Two fried eggs arranged like eyes on the plate with bacon strips deliberately made to curve in a smile. George had ordered the bacon extra crispy because she never ate bacon but she knew that Rube liked it that way. He always ate it off her plate, which always made George smile. Not that she needed any further reason to smile after last night.

"After I watched Bob reap – and he did really well, by the by – Charlotte and I rented a DVD and stayed in all night."

"What'd you see?" asked Mason.

"'The Picture of Dorian Gray'."

"Oh, was it British or American?" asked Roxy.

"Well it was set in England," said George, "but I think it was actually made in the U.S. back in the 1940s."

"Nineteen forty-five," said Bob. "Hurd Hatfield, George Sanders and a very young Angela Lansbury."

"Am I the last person on earth to see this movie?" said George.

"Could be," said Rube. "What prompted you to see it?"

George remembered Delores's remark yesterday. "Could be a commentary on our existence." She looked around the table. "You know?" She rolled her eyes significantly, shifting them toward Rube's big binder of ETDs, in case nobody got what she was referring to.

"Yeah," said Rube, "we need to talk about that sometime."

"What?" asked Bob.

"You haven't been around that long, Bob, but me and Roxy and Mason, and even George, have been coming to Der Waffle Haus for more years than I care to count."

"Well, ten in my case," said George.

Rube continued. "The point is that, to outsiders, we haven't appeared to age a day in the past decade, and the idea for reapers is to remain inconspicuous."

"What if we just get new appearances?" asked George. "You know, get a new model and come back here with new identities?"

"Think about it," said Rube. "We'd still be huddling together at the same table. I'd still be passing out stickies to everyone. We'd still have the same personalities. Mason would still be living off of sugar packets."

"Splenda," said George.

"And Roxy would still be a grouch," Rube went on.

"Hey!" said Roxy.

"And you'd still be eating off of everybody else's plate and tipping big," said George to Rube.

"The point is," Rube repeated, "no matter who we look like outwardly, we are still recognizable because of who and what we are."

"So does that mean we have to find a new place to eat?" said Bob. "I never liked this place, so I don't see a problem."

"That is what it will mean," said Rube. "It doesn't have to be today or tomorrow, but we are going to need to move on fairly soon. I'm already on the lookout for a new venue."

"Can we have some input?" asked Bob.

"No," said Rube. "Security is my responsibility, so I will make the decision."

"But we could have input," said Bob.

"No."

After Rube passed out stickies to everyone, he told George to stay behind, and everyone else left them alone.

"So-ooo, do I get a sticky today?" asked George.

"Yes, but I need to talk to you about it."

"Why?"

"Because I wasn't given any leeway about assigning this one to you, and I want you to know that I went to bat and demanded they didn't do this to you."

"Gee, and I think we have a tough boss. I never think about what you have to put up with. Do you ever see them face-to-face?"

"No, we just leave notes for each other. In some cases, like this one, angry notes. In this case, I may have used some language that I shouldn't have."

"Wait," said George, "what are we talking about? Somebody I know is going to die?"

Rube stared blankly at her.

"Oh, my God," she said. "Is it one of my parents? My sister? Are all of them going to be in a car wreck?"

"No, no," said Rube quickly. "It's nothing like that. They'd never make you do that. Hell, I would go on strike and let the universe go all whacky before I allowed that. No, it isn't any member of your family."

"It isn't Charlotte then, is it? I'd go on strike myself if anything happened to her."

"No, it's not Charlotte, either."

"Well, who is it?" said George, a little loudly. Other customers and their waitress, Kiffany, looked over at them.

Rube glanced around to make sure that people went back to minding their own business before he pulled the last remaining sticky from his binder and handed it to George. George looked at it for a long time. She could not believe it:

"D. Herbig, Abe's Japanese Restaurant, 14651 NE 24th St., Redmond, ETD 12:11 PM."

George looked up at Rube twice before she spoke. She had to look back at the sticky and make sure she had read it correctly. She had.

"Rube, this has got to be a mistake."

"I wish I could say it was, Peanut."

George could not remember the last time that Rube had called her that. It must have been years.

"Look, what if we check with the management upstairs again?" said George.

"You're bargaining, Peanut. You know the rules."

"Screw the rules!"

"You know better than that," said Rube. "We went over this years ago. Once somebody's name goes on that sticky, it's because they're going to die whether you're there or not. Without you, though, their afterlife is going to get off to a hellishly painful start."

"I know that," said George, and she reached in her purse for a semi-used Kleenex to dab at the tears that were already running down both of her cheeks. "I just don't want to be there when it happens. Hell, it's bad enough now that I know it's going to happen at all."

"I know, Peanut," said Rube.