The Funeral Planner (20 page)

I am standing next to my car, checking the address again on my PDA, when Victor swings into the parking lot driving a grey-green Saab convertible. His face is pleasantly tan and his cropped hair is slightly askew for the first time since I met him. It’s nice to see him looking less than perfect, I think.

“Welcome back to the West Coast,” he says, pulling up next to me.

“Thanks.”

“You look tired,” he says, noticing the bags under my eyes.

“Yes, well, globe-trotting across hemispheres might have something to do with it. So…why are we meeting at a bowling alley?”

“I thought it would be an appropriate place to celebrate the acquisition of your front bowling-pin client.” He smiles. “Do you mind? They’ve got great burgers.”

I shake my head. “I don’t mind.”

“Kind of goes with your whole raison d’être, don’t you think?” he asks, sliding out of his car.

“I think I’m missing something,” I say as we head toward the bowling alley.

“You know, customized funeral experiences. I thought I’d make it a customized meeting experience…to go along with the front bowling-pin client theme.” He winks at me and opens the door to the entrance.

“Cute.”

“You know what, Banks? You need to have more fun. I think we should bowl over lunch. You can show me how you nailed a kingpin like Arthur Pintock, and how you’re going to hook all the other lucky pins to follow. Did you use a spinner release or a helicopter strike?” he asks playfully.

“Are you throwing bowling jargon at me?”

Victor nods.

“But I don’t bowl.”

“Sure you do. I’ll teach you.”

“I thought you were my adviser, not my teacher.”

“What do you think an adviser is, Maddy?”

At the bowling alley, over burgers and lemonade, I fumble with my form, producing a series of slow-rolling gutter balls. Victor’s form, on the other hand, is graceful, elegant, powerful and balanced, and he produces one strike after another.

“Good thing I’m on your team.” He grins. “So tell me. What’s been your greatest obstacle so far?”

I think about it, and then answer, “Finding a way to bundle the product offerings. It would help if I could categorize people and create life-celebration templates for the Workaholic, the Retiree, the Student, the Nomad, the Dreamer, the Musician, and so on and so forth…but then I would compromise the personalization aspect, and, well, that’s not an option.”

“Keep working on it,” he says, grabbing the ball and readying himself for another shot down the alley.

I shrug and quip sarcastically, “Now that’s some sound advice.”

Victor approaches the lane with a five-step technique. He pushes away, releases and follows through to roll another strike. He looks back at me. “What’s the status of the advisory board?”

“All done and gift-wrapped to go. I have domain expertise in all the designated categories I want representation in—music, catering, event planning, lighting, funeral homes…”

“And the Web site? Your turn.”

I pick up my bowling ball. “Sierra’s working on it, but she’s also editing Arthur Pintock’s life bio video. I’m hoping to launch in a month. We’re including streaming media samples from both Uncle Sam and Arthur Pintock’s videos.”

“Is the logo done?”

“It’s awesome. I’ll show you on the PDA.” I toss the ball right into the gutter.

Victor is oblivious to my gutter ball as his single-mindedness has him now solely focused on the topic of Lights Out. “Have you thought about your marketing campaign?”

“I’m doing it on the low-down. My strategy is to rely on buzz marketing and establish a sales pipeline as an exhibitor at the next funeral industry trade show.”

He stares at me. “You just generated $35,000 in revenue from your first client. Why don’t you want to spend a portion of it on marketing?”

“You never know what you might need reserves for,” I say. “That and I believe buzz will tip it into early adoption.”

“Maddy. Are you giving yourself a salary?” he asks pointedly.

I look away. “It’s your turn.”

“Hey. I want you to start giving yourself a salary,” he says as he generates another strike. “It will make your job easier. Trust me on that one.”

“Trust you? What happened to advising me on bowling?”

He picks up my ball and hands it to me. “Breathe. Keep your eye on the pin…not the ball. Or if it’s easier, you can use the spot technique.”

“What am I spotting?”

“Pick a spot. Focus on the middle of the lane a third of the way down.”

“It’s that simple, huh?”

“Remember to move your arm like a pendulum and follow through on your swing to eye level, keeping your focus in alignment.”

“Anything else?”

“Try to hit as many pins as you can.”

I grin, then stand before the ten pins and for once try to follow someone else’s directions. I take in a deep breath, forcing myself to slow down. I line up the front bowling pin with a spot fifteen feet in front of me and roll the ball right toward it. Strike!

I look at Victor in disbelief. “Hey! I just got one!”

He shrugs and smiles. “Good thing you’re on my team.”

The balls roll back to me as the pins automatically realign. I wonder if that’s been my problem all along. Had I always been looking at the ball, rather than the destination and the market it was supposed to serve? Was that all I needed to create a flow of success, a paradigm shift in my focus?

“Yoo-hoo… Anyone in there?” asks Victor.

I come out of my trance to see Victor waving his hands in front of me. I wonder how long he’s been at it. “Sorry. I was thinking. Where were we?”

“You were going to unveil the first of your intellectual property to me?”

“Oh, the logo.” I reach for my briefcase and my Ziploc bag with Uncle Sam inside falls to the floor. I quickly fetch it.

“Do you always carry bags of dirt in your purse?” asks Victor.

“It’s not dirt. It’s dust.”

“Okay…do you always carry around bags of dust in your purse?”

“It’s, um…magic dust,” I say. “Uncle Sam left it for me.”

Victor looks oddly at me. “Was he a magician? Because if he was, you missed that on the life bio video altogether.”

“Well, that’s because it was a sample video and we didn’t have time to get everything in there. And besides, he was very private about his, uh, magic.”

“Why do you carry it around with you?”

“It’s for, um, ceremonies and rituals. Whenever I need to bless a situation, or a person, or an idea, I just, um, sprinkle a little…on my shoes,” I say, trying to make it sound logical and perfectly sane.

Victor looks me over. “Your shoes?”

“Yes. Because it’s your, um, feet that take you where you want to go and usually you have shoes on, so you sprinkle a little on your shoes and it, um, blesses the journey and the destination in one. It’s some eastern philosophy thing. And I’m into rituals—not cults or anything, mind you, just rituals now and again that symbolize the interpretation of the…uh, hard-to-explain kind.”

“Like the black ribbon on your shirt?”

“Exactly. Jewish custom. It symbolizes that I’m in mourning.”

Victor leans closer to me. “Well, for integrity’s sake, wouldn’t you say now that you’re in a state of extended celebration over your uncle’s life?”

I stop, realizing the importance of his perspective. “That’s really beautiful.”

“How long are you supposed to wear it?”

“A month.”

“It’s been three, hasn’t it?”

“Mmm.” I nod. “So it has.” My phone rings. I see it’s my mother calling and answer. “Hey, Mom, I’m in a meeting. Can I call you back?” I listen, and then say,“What?… Why?… Yes. I’ll be back soon.” I hang up.

“Red flag on the home front?” asks Victor.

“I don’t believe it. My brother and sister-in-law just decided to kick their personal merger in the bucket.”

“Any speculations as to why?”

“My assessment would be poor financial management, creating a rut, and then a disbanding in order to create some sort of necessary action,” I say, thinking out loud.

“Any solutions in sight?”

“Not according to my mom,” I answer, reeling from the news. “It’s unbelievable. Tara, Uncle Sam, now this.” I look at him. “Do you have brothers or sisters?”

“No. No sibling rivalries here.”

“What about your parents?”

“They’re together in Boston.” He pauses. “Look, why don’t you take care of your family business, Maddy. You can e-mail me the logo later.”

“Yeah. Okay. Thanks,” I say, in a daze. “What do you do?” I ask, shaking my head.

“Sprinkle their shoes…and let them walk where they will,” says Victor.

I have plenty of time to think on the red-eye back to Ann Arbor. I lean back in my seat fondling the black ribbon on my shirt. I think about Uncle Sam. I think about Tara. I think about the death of a marriage.

I pat my purse on my lap and murmur, “Oh, Uncle Sam, what are we going to do about Daniel and Rebecca?”

Death, I think, strikes not only living human beings but living entities like marriages, states of being, concepts, beliefs, even prototypes. I shake the thought off, not wanting to feel grief, anguish or regret. Instead, I leaf through my newspaper.

Once again, Derek Rogers’s name is in print. A brief blurb mentions his appearance in Washington, D.C., with the Senate Special Committee on Aging and the Federal Trade Commission. Why would Derek Rogers be concerned with that? What did aging have to do with art? Unlike other professions, didn’t aging artists possess greater bodies of work giving them greater recognition and greater value in their senior years than that of young, struggling, unknown artists? But knowing Derek, there had to be a twist. Then I think about what Victor said:
Keep your eye on the pin.
Yes, I tell myself, stop looking at Derek and stay on your own track.

With that I put the paper down and write up my action plan for the rest of the week.

I sit around the kitchen table at my parents’ house with Charlie, Eleanor and Daniel. We sip tea and nibble sliced oranges, except for Daniel, the perfect picture of misery with his all-black wardrobe and matching facial expression.

“What was her overriding reason?” asks Eleanor.

“I’m not proactive enough. Correction—at all,” replies Daniel.

“What are you supposed to be proactive about?” asks Charlie.

“I’m supposed to have us counting dollars…not pennies. I’m supposed to find a way to provide a lifestyle with some modicum of security. She also says I don’t do enough to help out with Keating, or play with Andy—that I’m too busy locked up in my
room…
creating
doom
and
gloom
, as she puts it.”

“That rhymes,” I say.

Daniel shoots me a look.

“Sorry.”

“Has she filed for a divorce?” asks Eleanor.

“She wants a separation for now and probably a divorce later,” says Daniel. “She wants us both to take time to think about what we want.”

Eleanor and Charlie pause. They know how hard it is for Daniel to make money and how hard it is for Rebecca to raise a family without financial support.

“What about the money you’re inheriting from Uncle Sam?” asks Charlie. “I would think that would be a big help.”

Daniel sighs. “Oh, it is. But even with all of that going to pay off all of our bills, we’re still in debt.”

“How much debt are you talking about?” asks Eleanor.

“The loan officer at the bank said it was over a hundred thousand.”

“How did that happen?” asks Charlie.

“That’s the thing,” says Daniel. “I have no idea.”

“I do,” I say, then suck on an orange.

They all look at me…waiting.

“Risk management,” I say, as if it makes perfect sense.

“What are you talking about?” asks Daniel.

Charlie and Eleanor raise eyebrows, as well.

I put the orange down to answer. “Well, nowadays, the cost of raising a family includes accounting for risk management in everything you do, and that, on top of inflation, costs money. It’s no longer just a bicycle, it’s the bicycle helmet, and the protective knee pads and the wrist guards. It’s no longer just a stroller, it’s the top-of-the-line ultimate-safety stroller. It’s no longer regular produce, it’s organic produce. It’s no longer public schools because they’ve gone to pot; its private schools that cost a fortune, not to mention the fund-raisers where they constantly hit you up for more contributions on top of the annual fee. And it’s no longer a good ol’ used car, it’s the family van with all the safety features and the safety buckles required by law when it comes to driving around kids… It all adds up… Shall I go on?”

“How do you know all this if you don’t have kids?” asks Daniel.

I lift up my trusty
Financial Street Journal.