When Rico brought the body, David Fisher knew he could handle this one on his own. Rico was an umatched artist in reconstructing battered faces, true, but Cordelia Chase, 24, had died in a coma. There wasn't even a wound anywhere. Besides, he was only too aware he had dumped a good deal of the business on Rico and Nate; contributing what he still could made him feel slightly less guilty about it.
A non-violent death. David found the idea soothing until he remembered the woman who had died in the middle of a happy anniversary with her husband. The woman whose body he had dumped somewhere on the road while a madman held him at gunpoint. Of all the violations of that day, this one somehow had felt the worst. There was little David took more seriously about being a funeral director than being entrusted with the dead. Treating them with respect, doing what he could to give them dignity, no matter how they died. He still felt he had failed that woman unforgivably.
"You'd better not dump me in the garbage, Mister," said the newest arrival at Fisher & Diaz, whose still, nude body was lying in front of him. "I'm Cordelia Chase. And while we're at it, can you do something about my hair? It's had a horrible time these last years, but I want to be buried as a brunette without curls, thank you very much."
"You will," David assured her, putting all the instruments and fluids he'd need on the table next to him, and the young woman squinted.
"Wow," she said. "Detached much? Aren't you even a little freaked out that a ghost is talking to you?"
"They do on a regular basis," David said matter of factly. "Of course, this is all a fantasy I started to have in order to cope with the loss of my father several years ago. Or maybe it is some kind of projection of my inner issues. I don't know, and I don't care. They're my fantasies. I didn't even tell the therapist Keith and I were going to last year about them."
The Cordelia Chase his imagination had produced was dressed in designer jeans and a t-shirt that showed off her figure. This unfortunately reminded him of Keith and Celeste. He had assumed things would be better once Keith returned; that the panic attacks and the endless hollowness would cease. Instead, hearing that Keith had decided on a one night stand with a woman had added a new kind of panic to the multitude. David tried not to stare at the dead woman's cleavage, but he couldn't help it. She wasn't the thin, anorexic type so common in Los Angeles. He could imagine Keith wanting a woman like that, if Keith decided to try more of the straight life, that was. If Keith decided he'd had enough of David and his neediness and his inability to get over what had happened.
"I'm not your fantasy," the late Cordelia Chase said crossly. "It's so weird, talking to an outsider after all this time. I'm a ghost, okay? And anyway, aren't you gay? You are, right? Even though you're staring at my breasts, and sure, they're great, but hey, enough already, okay?"
David blushed. It was an annoying habit he had not been able to get rid of. Keith used to find it endearing, but these days, there wasn't much left to blush about. He focused on the dead body in front of him instead of the imaginary one pacing through his place of work and was relieved to have some professionalism kick in. Examining it, he found matching scars on her back and stomach.
"I fell on a rebar that one time," she informed him. "After watching my boyfriend maul his best friend. Can't tell you which sucked worse."
"Do you want me to cover it up?" David asked politely, trying not to imagine watching boyfriends kissing their pals.
"No," she said. "No point. I'll be wearing clothes anyway, right?"
He also saw stretch marks on her stomach, and looked at the sheet with the personal details Rico had handed him again. Confused, he said:
"There is nothing about a child here. But you were pregnant."
"Twice," she said, sounding somewhat brittle for the first time. "I'm a real ad for why safer sex is a good, good thing, buddy."
Lifting her right arm, he saw a scar on her wrist. The tissue was well-healed; it wasn't a recent one. Still, he wondered whether she had tried to kill herself at some point.
"You didn't want children?" David asked, unsure. "I always did. Keith and I were thinking about adopting one before… well, before."
"Wanting them wasn't the point," Cordelia replied, looking at the embalming fluids and wrinkling her nose. "Nobody asked me. I thought getting tortured with visions was bad, but you know what? Getting hijacked by some freak on a power trip is worse."
At that, David stopped his preliminary examination and stared at her.
"Yes," he said. She clicked her tongue.
"And you know the thing that would make me throw up if I still had, like, a body? At some moments, I enjoyed it. Not most of the time, most of the time I was furious and scared and helpless, and I hated every second, but sometimes I went in the other direction because it was so bad, and I got off."
Professional to the last, he made it to the sink in time to throw up. Afterwards, he stared at the flowing water and imagined being cleaned away right with the puke.
"David," said Nate's voice from the stairs, and David turned around. Nate had shouldered Maya, and they both looked down at him. So far, David had seen Maya as resembling Lisa more than her father, but right now, her expression was entirely Nate's. She was a Fisher, God help her.
"I'm fine," he said, mustering his smile for clients he didn't talk to anymore.
"That's bullshit, David," Nate said angrily. At that moment, the bell rang. Normally, David avoided going to the door, but right now, he would have done anything to get out of a conversation he didn't want to have, so he pulled his coat off while walking and went upstairs. When he passed Nate, Maya stretched out an arm, and he could feel her tiny fingers briefly touching his shoulder. It made him speed up his steps.
"David, you're…" Nate began, following him, but David, ignoring him, opened the door. It probably was one of Claire's friends, though they all seemed to have a key these days. In any case, it was someone who couldn't ask him for anything important.
The man standing outside actually made him blink. It wasn't so much that he was tall, dark and handsome, or even that he wore a leather coat and looked suspiciously like a fantasy David had had as an adolescent. No, it was his skin.
David had lost confidence in almost all other things, but if there was one thing he knew inside out, it was his trade. And that man wasn't just pale. No, he had the skin of a corpse.
"I'm Angel," the stranger said, and David turned around to make sure Nate saw and heard him, too. Nate just looked irritated, which wasn't that unusual. Maya chose this precise moment to start crying.
The apparition at the door looked at the baby and kindly suggested:
"Maybe you should try making her listen to vacuum cleaners. That always helps."