Pretty experienced with dead people

===63 Winter 1395==========

“Oh, Bersk!” Baggett crowed, leaning over from his bar stool and half-colliding into me with silly enthusiasm. “Look who it is! Perfect Hair Guy is finally here to see you!”

“You are drunk,” I informed him, then with faint surprise suddenly placed who he meant. It had to be three or four weeks now since I’d interviewed that soft-spoken shopkeep who at the time had expressed an interest in seeing me socially. If I’d stopped to think about it, my assumption would have been that he’d simply changed his mind, or didn’t want to get mixed up with a guard officer after all, or something like that. But I hadn’t really thought much about it, and Baggett hadn’t slagged me about him since that day, which now that I considered it, was probably Curry’s doing. Now that person, having spotted us, was making his way from the door over to where we sat at the bar.

“Oh,” I said, looking at my unexpected guest in surprise. “I really didn’t expect to see you after all this while.”

He unwound his winter scarf from his neck and gave me a sheepish look. “I went the very next day, actually—and kept trying again till I got sick of drinking alone. And then yesterday I happened to walk by here on an errand and realized this was a lot closer to Vox Castle and that you probably told me _Mar_wick’s, in Forest Street, and not _War_wick’s, in Foster Street.”

“Oh, my gods, Warwick’s is clear almost to the Sixth!” I said. “How many times did you walk all that way?”

“Only… seven or so,” he admitted, with an endearing air of mild embarrassment.

“That’s dedication,” Baggett cut in approvingly.

“Well, have a seat, then,” I said. “Swap me places?” I asked Curry. I was perched between him and Baggett at the bar, but there was a free seat on his other side. “This is my partner, Curry, by the way.”

Curry slid off his stool and held his hand out. “Magnus. Nice to meet you.”

My visitor gave him a nod and a firm shake. “Roland. Likewise.”

We all took our seats again, and Curry turned to Baggett so Roland and I could have some semblance of a private chat. “What do you want to drink?” I asked.

“How’s their red wine selection?”

I shrugged and grinned. “I have no idea. I’m not that cultured. If it’s a normal night then I have whatever’s on tap, and if it’s a hard-drinking night it’s whiskey or brandy.”

He smiled at me. “Then we’ll find out.”

A few minutes later I was tucking into my fresh pint and he was sipping at a glass of wine as dark and red as rubies. “Want a taste?” he asked, offering me the glass.

I took it and tipped some into my mouth, then swallowed it. “I’m probably doing it wrong,” I said, “but it tastes good.”

“Only snobs think there’s a wrong way to enjoy wine,” Roland said, taking his glass back.

“I guess that means you’re not a snob?”

“Gods, I hope not,” he said. “Why, do I come off like one?”

“Not really. I think it’s only that you dress nicely, and you’re far better groomed than me, and you haven’t got any swagger to you.”

“Hopefully those things aren’t counting against me?”

“They’re not. Baggett’s supplying all the swagger I need in my life, and then some.”

“What’s your kind of work like, anyway? I can’t picture both working with somebody and choosing their company on my own time.”

I shrugged and took a drink from my pint. “It’s good. Interesting. Sometimes hard. It can be a downer—you see a lot of the ugly things people do to each other. But there’s the good in it, too. We can’t take back something terrible that happened, but at least sometimes we can give a victim’s loved ones a bit of peace. That’s all about **** work, though. Fraud and other stuff, I imagine it’s less emotionally hard on a person. Probably that’s why we’re closer than the other units.”

Roland nodded while I spoke, taking me in with interest, occasionally sipping his wine, and not interrupting. Like Curry, he was a good listener.

“What about you?” I asked when I was through. “Do you mainly operate the shop? Or is there more to the business than that?”

“Mainly the shop. But… there are some other aspects too,” he said vaguely.

“Does that mean mortuary services?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he admitted.

“Do people react funny to that? Is that why the hesitation?”

“You could say that,” he said, a little ruefully. “Some quicker than others. I’ve had people get up and leave right away. Others think they’re fine with it and then decide later it’s no good. It doesn’t bother you?”

I shook my head. “I’m… pretty experienced with dead people?” I said after taking a moment trying to decide how to put that, then laughed at my own awkward wording.

“Right. Well, that’s rather refreshing, honestly.”

“So, I haven’t seen your place. Are you one of the full-suite ones with a chapel and all of it? Or more like, you do the embalming for all the little chapels that don’t want to insource that stuff or pay to insure a roomful of flammable components?”

He looked genuinely startled that I had asked. “No chapel,” he said after a moment. “But there is a crematory—only a small one—and a modest embalming facility, in the basement. I service a number of funeral providers in the area, as well as wholesaling to other enbalmers.”

I propped my chin in my hand and studied him. “So, your philosophical leanings—are we talking more, school of Arvinter? Or Rava?”

“Is there a wrong answer?” he wanted to know.

“Yes.”

Roland took me in for a moment, then drained his wineglass and motioned to Leta for another. “I might need that if I answer wrong,” he said to me, which made me smile. “Do you want one of what I’m having?” he added, motioning to my empty pint.

“Sure.”

While Leta poured the two drinks I used the chance to study him. He had a pleasant face, glossy black hair, and eyes that I would have called pretty if I wasn’t concerned about a man taking that word wrong. However easy he was on the eyes, though, his gentle, understated demeanor was growing on me a bit. My peculiar, despairing tirade of a few weeks prior had impressed upon me just how sick I was of men in pubs—being tiresomely precious about their egos, or trying to impress me with dumb manly bullshit, or attempting to use idiotically formulaic head games to trick me into sleeping with them when I’d have said yes to a straightforward question that simply didn’t insult my intelligence. I hadn’t been up to a lot of my old tricks lately, so to speak, or looked up any of my occasional good-time partners.

It was a nice change of pace, talking to someone who hadn’t yet employed a painfully obvious double entendre and thought themselves clever for it. And he had opened by simply asking me about myself. Not to mention that when I talked, he listened, instead of simply being quiet until the first opening came for him to cut in with some unlikely brag meant to impress me. I liked people who paid attention in conversations, like me and Curry.

Roland paid Leta and slid one of the glasses over to me. I picked it up and took a drink bigger than the mere sip I’d had before. “I didn’t realize before just how strong this was,” I said. “Maybe this should be part of my rotation. Anyway—where were we?”

He smiled. “I was about to expose myself and possibly win your disapproval by declaring an allegiance in the, er, raging? Arvinter-Rava mortuary sciences controversy.”

“And?” I prompted.

“Rava,” he said, looking at me a bit apprehensively.

I couldn’t help smiling at him like a goof. “That was the right answer,” I said, then on impulse, pulled Curry’s little rook necklace, which he’d let me keep in recent weeks, out of my shirt to show him. “I’m sturdily affiliated,” I said, tucking the necklace safely back under my shirt.

“Well, that’s encouraging,” he said, “because the truth is more like, I don’t care at all for Arvinterite views on the subject, but wanted to seem more neutral just in case.”

“Ew,” I said, making him laugh. “I’m more offended you think there’s a chance I’d want something to do with those people. Rava preserve me.”

In this fashion we passed a pleasant hour or so, working our way through another two glasses of wine, and getting more of a sense for each other, until Curry tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Bag’s heading home because Yerg’s been working second shift all week—I thought I might go talk to somebody who’s been eyeing me up all night. You good on your own?”

“Plenty good,” I told him, remember in time not to hop off my stool and hug him. I didn’t want to do that, if he meant to go talk to some girl who might see that and think it meant stuff it didn’t. “Have fun.”

“You too.” Curry gave me his familiar little smile and slapped a couple of gilder on the bar for Leta. “Night, Fuzzy.”

“I have a shameful confession,” Roland said the very second I turned back to him, his cheeks pink with either drink or bashfulness, or both. Either way, the effect was rather charming. “I forgot to ask your given name when we sat down, and then the longer I went, the more awkward it felt to ask, and I thought, at some point surely your partner might say your name—except that whatever he called you just now is so obviously a nickname that I’m now left with nothing and the result is crippling interior panic.”

I was tipsy enough that this speech made me giggle outright. “It’s Fauzia,” I told him. “And if it makes you feel better—once I still went home with somebody, after figuring out he’d spent the whole night thinking I was called Lydia. And that guy didn’t even admit it. I think he just corrected himself and prayed I was too stupid to notice. You’re leagues ahead.”

Roland seemed a little startled at my forthrightness. “I didn’t know going home with me was on the table,” he said after a moment, in a way that made me think he was choosing his words very carefully right now, and made me curious as to the specific reason why.

I propped my elbow back on the bar and leaned my chin in my hand, considering him. “Is that too slutty for you?” I asked. “Asking seriously—you should be honest with me, if that bothers you. Otherwise we’re wasting each other’s time and probably both getting our feelings hurt in the process. We might as well part on friendly terms if you can’t live with my sordid past.”

“Gut answer is, no, it doesn’t bother me,” he said after a moment. “I’m just at a slight loss because I can’t remember ever getting asked this kind of thing before. Since—I’m too bad a liar to convincingly pretend I’m not a mortician, and most people don’t want to tumble a mortician at all, let alone on a first meeting.”

“Good thing it’s our second meeting then.” I grinned and heaved a cheerful shrug. “I think you’re cute. I liked having a real conversation, and getting to know you a bit. And I liked that you weren’t trying to impress me in stupid ways all night. If you’re game, I’m game.”

“I was trying very hard to impress you, though,” he said. “Hopefully you can explain later what made those efforts not stupid, so I can stick with them and avoid the other kind.”

I laughed again, then met and held his gaze. “Hey. You want to get out of here?”

“Are you sure?” he asked, looking still a bit uncertain. “I don’t want to take advantage. Or make you feel pressured—”

Roland left off abruptly as I slid off my seat and touched my hand to his chest as I leaned in to whisper, “If anything, some people might say I’m the one taking advantage of you. I’m getting my cloak. Come on and join me, if you want to.”