The Mysteries of Unclaimed Cadavers

Ben Sommers had been dead four days, fifteen hours, six minutes, and thirty-two seconds when his family filed quietly out of the drafty funeral home, loaded into their ’72 Plymouth Duster, and drove away leaving him thoroughly abandoned and utterly dead.
They never looked back.
Mr. Beery, the funeral home director, observed them leaving from the window of his conveniently located first floor office. He straightened his desk, filed Mr. Sommers’ report, and watered his petunias before inspecting the viewing room. Very little had changed from that morning when he had prepared for Mr. Sommers family. The chairs were neat and orderly and the flowers cheerful, yet the unfortunate Mr. Sommers appeared to have been unexpectedly discarded. Sensing that his dead companion’s family had abandoned him for good, Mr. Beery, who had been cleaning his glasses with a very precise circular wrist flick, sighed and once again retreated into his office to make a phone call.
As he dialed the familiar numbers and rubbed his bald, pink forehead, his mind ran over what he was to say to the voice on the other end of the line.
A nervous man by nature, Mr. Beery’s difficulties on the phone had not to do with the words themselves, but with the fact that he couldn’t see with whom he was conversing. That anyone would care to judge a peer by their voice eluded him. He didn’t find a voice particularly important – after all, it didn’t seem to assist the dead. Abruptly, the line picked up and a low male voice on the other end answered, jarring him out of his thoughts and causing him to drop his glasses. He picked them up with unsteady hands and placed him on his forehead.
“Hello?” The voice was deep and gruff, further pushing Mr. Beery into his unease.
“Oh, erm, yes, Mr. Chilton?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Mr. Beery from the Puckett County Funeral Homes –”
“Got another?”
“Seems to be that way, sir.”
“Jesus, what is it these days with people and their dead? This is, what, the third deserted body?”
“Fourth, actually,” said Mr. Beery, “and it would’ve been the fifth it we hadn’t chased Ol’ Brennan’s offspring down and forced his body on them.”
“That’s right! By god, there are some sick people in this town, that’s for sure.”
Mr. Beery wasn’t sure if the townsfolk were sick or simply poor.
“Well, I suppose you’ll want me to come and collect the poor guy?” said Mr. Chilton.
“That will be fine, sir. At your leisure, I’ll be here all day.”
As Mr. Beery hung up the phone, he considered the sudden rash of unclaimed or deserted bodies. Shaking his head, he removed his glasses from his pink forehead and continued cleaning them with a precise circular flick of the wrist.

• • •

As her ’72 Plymouth Duster hurtled down the highway at an audacious speed of 102 miles per hour, Cat Sommers temporarily turned her focus from the road to freeing herself from the itchiness of her rose sweater. The landscape around her was little known, yet she lacked interest or time to invest in its discovery. The dry desert air and beating sun were enough to warn her away. She did admire the sunset. Its color was infectious; a late summer orange so brilliant it left a lush lime halo in her vision long after she looked away.
The night air was cool, yet an unwelcome bead of sweat gathered at her pretty brow in frustration. “Crap,” she said to herself, softly although she was quite alone. Her agitation was becoming more developed as the night progressed, but was suddenly startled with the unexpected ring of her phone.
“Hello?” said Cat.
“Cat, you need to come home.”
The words raised up the hairs on the back of her neck. She ground her teeth in frustration and considered hanging up, but instead sighed reluctantly.
“Please mind your business, Mother.”
“You know you can’t run away from me.”
“And what if I’m not running from you?”
The words came out unexpectedly, and Cat found herself surprised at the truth of them. She hoped she didn’t sound surprised through the static of the phone.
“You sound surprised. Cat, please stop screwing around and tell me where you are.”
At this, Cat's agitation levels hit their high and she hung her phone up with a snap. Her mother’s impertinence infuriated her, yet as she drove into the deepening sunset, a sense of calm washed over her and for the first time since the death of her father.
Besides, she felt free.

• • •

“All right, he’s all loaded up.”
Mr. Chilton’s promptness had always impressed Mr. Beery. By the time he had hung up the phone, it took Mr. Chilton exactly 16 minutes and 57 seconds to travel approximately twenty-three miles. It was precisely the kind of alacrity that Mr. Beery valued in an employee. However, although he had offered Mr. Chilton a job on a dozen separate occasions, Mr. Chilton continued to refuse by mumbling something about creepy dead bodies that Mr. Beery, quite, frankly could not comprehend. Because of this accidental misunderstanding, they avoided any attempt at a personal conversation. The awkwardness between them continued to grow more tangible every meeting. Most business acquaintances in a similar situation would simply discontinue meeting; instead, they pretended that the discomfort didn’t exist and business sustained as its usual discomfited self.
The primary reason for their continued meetings was because Mr. Beery’s graveyard was at capacity and nearly in bankruptcy, and so he could neither afford nor fit to bury the recent rash of unclaimed bodies. Mr. Chilton, on the other hand, lived in a tent on a large plot of land in the middle of the Wyoming desert, and cared nothing for the dead – so long as they were buried well away from his tent. In his words, “if they can’t shoot back, they’re no problem of mine.” Strangely enough, he didn’t apply the same theory to a possible job at the funeral home. The situation continued to provide assistance to Mr. Beery’s failing funeral home, and Mr. Chilton continued to not mind so long as he buried them far away from his home.
“Thank you, Mr. Chilton. I appreciate your promptness as usual.”
Mr. Chilton grunted in response. “I told you to call me Bud. Mr. Chilton’s too formal for me.”
“Ah, yes, yes, I apologize Mr. – Bud.”
They both looked at the earthy ground beneath their feet, at the sun-filled blue sky, at the deserted coffin – anywhere but at each other.
Finally, Bud mumbled, “Well, gots to get a goin’. This poor guy’s been through enough already to continue sitting out here among the live. Seems not right.”
Mr. Beery pondered the simple eloquence of Bud’s treatment of the dead as compared to his aversion. It was as if he saw both what once was living and what now is dead in the body, and one enlightened him while the other terrified.
Bud gruffly offered his hand to which Mr. Beery gave a single shake. They parted wordlessly – Mr. Beery to his empty funeral home, and Bud to his empty land.

• • •

Cat fidgeted in her prickly rose sweater and felt ridiculous in her mother’s oversized black hat. Feathers sprouted like wings from within the dark folds and Cat found herself wishing they were so she could fly far away from this day.
She looked absent-mindedly around the room. The carpet was a horrible, but also a weirdly comforting soft maroon. The chairs were the same maroon, which gave the room an oozy marshmallow feeling. To keep from dozing off, Cat turned her attention to the single window in the dreary space. Luckily, it was a spectacular day. The sky was a hazy autumnal grey and the trees were just dropping their last oranges, reds, and late greens. Clouds whisked across the sky in a hurry, making Cat feel as if time was moving even more slowly.
Her father’s funeral, although sad, was extraordinarily uninteresting to Cat. She had loved her father yet she had ceased to know him approximately fifteen years ago.
The deceased Mr. Sommers had disappeared on Cat’s fifth birthday. Cat’s mother had been cutting Cat’s chocolate orange mouse birthday cake while Cat played hide-and-go-seek with Blue, her dog. Yet when Mrs. Sommers called for Mr. Sommers to join them for the extermination of the candles, and had received no response, Cat’s mother knew he had ditched for good. Cat, although she had felt confused and distressed at her father’s recent absence, knew by the hardened look on her mother’s face that she would never knew why her father vanished.
And sure enough, he never appeared in Cat’s life again: until today, as a corpse.
A sharp nudge in her side brought her back from her daydreams. Cat looked up started and at the scowling face of her aged mother, who was wearing a hat identical to Cat’s. Her eyes gestured to the coffin and her head dropped as if in prayer, yet Cat knew that her mother’s soul was way past saving.
The dull service finally commenced, and the priest excused himself to allow the family to pay their last respects. With the room to their selves, Cat was finally allowed to take off the hideous hat. Cat’s brothers began to whisper in small voices that were just loud enough to be horribly annoying to Cat.
Mrs. Sommers, on the other hand, began to look around the room as if to check if they were really alone. When satisfied, she gestured attention to the boys and announced that it was time to leave and to not forget their jackets. They raced out of the room, bouncing into walls and knocking over flowers on the way out.
“Please be quiet boys!”
Cat turned to her mother. “And what exactly are we doing?”
“We’re leaving, of course.” She began to put on her overcoat, but her hat got stuck in the large faux fur hood. Cat sighed and walked over to help, but her mother only shrugged her off.
Annoyed, Cat asked “But why? I mean the funeral service isn’t even over. We haven’t even buried Dad and –“
Cat’s mother turned to her and gave her a look that spelled death. “Because it’s time to go, that’s why.”
The boys raced back into the room, coats half on and fighting like the French at Waterloo. Mrs. Sommers laughed, hustled them into their coats, and hurried them out the door, calling to Cat to turn off the lights on her way out.
Alone, Cat stood in the empty room parallel from her dead father. The silence comforted her, and she drank in the shadowy peace as a replacement lifeline. She walked closer to the casket. The lid was closed and so she put her hand out to open it, realizing that she didn’t have a contemporary image of her father. Yet a small sense of propriety – or fear – stopped her. She then realized that she didn’t even know how he had died. Her mother had forged a gruesome enough image in her mind of her father’s death, which involved a smattering of prostitutes, narcotics, and wheelchairs, yet she doubted her mothers much too voluntary Poe-esque recreations of this stranger’s life. The collection of old Agatha Christie novels didn’t improve her mother’s case, especially considering her love of dark detective stories and her strong imagination.
She smiled, put her hand to her lips, and blew a kiss to the dark oak coffin. She then turned around, turned off the lights, and walked forever out of the funeral home.

• • •

Sun blasted her as she went outside, and she had to shield her eyes to look for her family. Not hearing them, the return of her sight confirmed the fact that they were nowhere around her. She sat down on the steps of the home and fanned herself in an attempt to cool. The day was blistering. She felt immediately trapped within a sunspot, and she felt as if the ground was turning to boiling lava underneath her feet. A light headache began to form.
Five minutes passed, and still no sign of her estranged family. Tired of waiting, Cat considered leaving without them. Yet freedom was a state she had little familiarity with.
So she broke the barrier with one swift glance at the open road for her family. All that greeted her was the dusty and infinite blue sky all around her. She opened the door of her family’s ’72 Plymouth Duster and put one foot up, ready to depart into her unknown.
And as the key turned in the ignition and the loud roar of the engine broke the heavy silence all around her, she knew this was simply the beginning, and she smiled.

• • •

The infinite desert sprawled unforgiving before and behind her, wide and deep and tangible as the sun above her. It had been almost two hours since her disappearance from the funeral home, and she knew to expect a phone call from her mother any time. She accepted that she could not escape her mother. She was content with knowing that she could always track Cat down, as so long as Cat could always take the keys and run.
She looked around her at the cerulean sky, the blond sand, and the eternal winding splotch of payment before her and began to miss her family. Yet at that instant Cat knew that if she called her mother while feeling anything less than chipper she wouldn’t hear the end of it, for her mother was not an empathetic or sensitive person.
The first time she had realized this was on her thirteenth birthday. Cat had decided to throw a birthday party – her very first, in fact. Unfortunately, she was rather unpopular at school and although she handed invitations in plenty, nobody showed up. This complete failure of her very first birthday party made Cat feel as though she was very unequipped to deal with her young age of thirteen. Devastated, she ran to her mother, expecting a comforting hug and a cup of hot chocolate, yet all she received was a stern lecture on the importance of not letting your guard down.
“You’ll only be disappointed if you keep putting your happiness in other people’s hands,” she said.
Such was how Cat very quickly became familiar with her mother’s hard parenting techniques and the loneliness that accompanied them. Through the years, she became familiar with her mother and soon her loneliness replaced the social urge to make new friends. Her nature became solitary and her disposition shy, yet she found that she did not have to worry about disappointing anyone but herself.
The road before her stretched on and on and on into oblivion, yet Cat and her thoughts were contented to see it to its end, wherever that might be. She grabbed her mothers oversized black hat off the seat beside her, laughed at the absurdity of herself, tossed it out the window, and invited freedom to take it's place.

• • •

Mrs. Sommers watched as her daughter drove her only ride home farther and farther away from the empty funeral home. She was not angry, for she had trained her daughter to feel and move through life with the same hardness of heart that she did. And she could not blame her, after all, for wanting to rid herself of her family. Most young ladies of twenty-one were far removed from all familial ties by their eighteenth birthday, preferring instead to appear as orphans abandoned by their parents long before they could remember them.
Cat had been dutiful, and a pleasant enough daughter. Yet Mrs. Sommers was happy to see her drive away alone to lead her solitary existence as she wished.
She knew Cat was angry with her, and she knew it might take more than a lifetime to forgive, yet Mrs. Sommers was not one to concern overly concern herself with the feelings of others. Cat would bounce back – or she wouldn’t. But whatever her daughter did wouldn’t change how she would lead her own life, which, unfortunately included finding an alternative ride home in the present. She looked around the deserted Wyoming landscape and didn’t see a human being for miles, but was not discouraged. The dry land energized her more than discouraged her to leave, and she turned her thoughts solely to escaping the dreary landscape before it suffocated her.
“Think, think, think,” she murmured to herself.
She crossed her arms, then put one to her chin and screwed her eyes in consideration. Pivoting around to deliberate the landscape that surrounded her on all sides, she noticed the bed of an old ’86 Ford truck sticking out from behind the funeral home. The whitewashed building made the rusted bed glow like cold butter on hot toast. Mrs. Sommers smiled and began to walk over with a confident gait, the yellow landscape swallowing her whole.

• • •

Mr. Beery, exhausted from the funeral service and glad to have finally escaped the dreary attention span of the Sommers, dashed appreciatively into his office and locked the door behind him. Upon seeing the inviting crimson fabric of his oversized armchair, he climbed into it, snuggled down deep, and his heavy eyelids began to let gravity pull them down to mother’s earth very slowly. He told himself that he could only sleep for ten minutes, which was the perfect amount of time, in his mind, for the family to pay their last respects.
With his eyes closed he could feel his other senses heighten, making him believe his oversized armchair was swallowing him whole. Its soft plush exterior tickled his skin and as he slipped deeper into the folds of the fabric he fell deeper into sleep. His dreams were a chaotic mixture of plush chairs and coffins, and he followed each trough twisty tunnels and darkness.
A tickle on his taste buds suggested to his brain that he was hungry, and he bolted awake. At first he couldn’t property identify where he was, but he noticed the bright ginger clock above his desk. He realized that it had ceased working and that most likely the battery needed to be replaced. He made a mental note to change the battery, but still felt as though something was amiss. Only then did he realize that he was not at home and was still at work. He checked his wristwatch and gasped upon the realization that he had left the Sommers family for over an hour unattended. He lurched out of the oversized armchair, yet struggled with eradicating himself (for even when properly sitting in the chair his legs would not reach the floor). He then hightailed out of the room as fast as his stubby legs would carry him.
But it was all in vain. For approximately five minutes after Mr. Beery had retired into his office, the Sommer’s had paid their respects and absconded the property. Upon discovering a very empty viewing room, save for the unfortunately deceased Mr. Sommers, Mr. Beery dashed half-dressed outside the building to apologize to the family. But that too was very much in vain, for not only had the family absconded the property, they had deprived Mr. Beery of his ’86 Ford.
Mr. Beery sat down on the solitary wooden chair. His neck gave in retaliation against his shoulders and his head feel limp and sad into his outstretched hands. The patchwork rug atop the black and white tile floor seemed to laugh at him, it’s stringy patches arranged in an abstract eyeless human with a sneering grin. He stayed like that for five, ten, fifteen minutes, when a half crumpled slice of paper catch his attention. The handwriting was short and sloppy yet the message simple:
Sorry – but thanks – for the car.
This is when Mr. Beery decided he needed a drink. He went to his shed where he knew was an old rusty bike and peddled his way into what qualified as a town in that part of Wyoming. Mr. Beery made his way to the bar.
“Heya Joe, how’s it going?” he said upon entrance.
“Bill! Jeeze haven’t seen you around here in a long time. What’ll it be?”
“Oh how about your best brandy – better made it a double. It’s been one of those days. And would you mind calling me Mr. Beery?”
Joe nodded wordlessly, poured a tall brandy, and plopped it down in front of Bill Beery.
He nodded in thanks and drank it in one breath.
Feeling the alcohol immediately beginning to course through his veins, he looked around the bar for familiar faces. It was mostly empty, save for a few young farmers and work hands. But he suddenly recognized one of the young ladies from the funeral that afternoon. What was her name? He couldn’t recall. But the alcohol was pushing him to confront her about leaving the funeral home with his car.
He walked over to her, drink in hand, and just when he was about to scold her, he noticed that she was crying. He looked for a way to exit without being seen.
“Hey Bill, you want another one of those? I got something good in the back too.”
Cat looked up from her drink, wiped the streams from her cheeks, and looked up, thinking that the question was directed towards her. But when her eyes lifted she noticed Mr. Beery was not five feet before her, poised to dash. She looked momentarily confused, as if trying to place a familiar face, and suddenly her face broke into a drunken smile and she greeted him enthusiastically.
“Well if it isn’t the good ol’ funeral director! What a good ol’ surprise.” Her words were slurring into themselves at the end and she tried to stand up. “Whoa, that’s not a good idea. Let’s just stay sitting,” she said to herself.
Mr. Beery wasn’t sure to stay or go. He couldn’t decide if she had invited his company or preferred to stay alone, so he wavered unsurely between staying and leaving. But before he had a chance to decide, she decided for him.
“Please, stay, Mr. Funeral guy.” It was more of an order, and he was in no state to argue. After getting his second drink from the bar, he joined her at her table for two, slipping his jacket around the back of the chair as if to mark a territory he didn’t want.
Mr. Beery listened wordlessly as Cat droned on and on about the troubles of her family. He sipped his drink while watching Cat throw back her second, third, fourth, and fifth straight shots of whisky. It put him to shame. Yet he felt a sense of responsibility listening to this young woman talk about her troubles, as if he was making up for the fact that he had never had a family of his own, as if this was his penance.
Mr. Beery had always wondered what his life would be like with a family of his own. He had decided long ago to give up his dreams of a family for his dreams of owning a small business. Part of the reason he gave of a family was because no woman was interested, and a funeral home wasn’t exactly the kind of small business he had in mind – yet usually life happens differently than desired, and such was the case with Bill Beery.
In the past, there had always been a girlfriend here, a more-than-friend there. But his smattering of girlfriends was meager and none of them quite made his heart pitter-patter like he’d always imagined it should. His overwhelming shyness didn’t help matters, but he wasn’t overly picky with the women he dated so things usually worked out in his favor. The catch happened when he purchased the funeral home twenty years ago. His girlfriend at the time – another one who simply didn’t inspire the pitter-patter – was wholly put-off by the prospect of dating a funeral home director, and so she spilt the day he signed the papers. Such his luck continued. Things would be going great with someone until he revealed what he did. He tried his hand at lying about his occupation, but sooner or later the truth would come out and he’d be at square one once again.
He dated one woman once who wasn’t bugged by the funeral home director. She had been sweet and charming in the beginning, and when he discovered her acceptance with his occupation, he almost thought that he loved her. But it was very quickly revealed that the reason she didn’t mind the whole dead body thing was because she actually preferred dead bodies to real ones. It frightened Mr. Beery considerably, and from then on he lived his life in a very solitary fashion.
“– which is why I hate kumquats. They always seem to get in the way of everything, do you agree?”
Mr. Beery nodded his head without understanding what she had been talking about. He looked down at his drink – it was empty. He put the empty glass on the table, fake yawned, and said, “Golly it’s getting really late. I really should be going. This old man is way past his bedtime.”
Cat looked surprised, and then sad, and finally angry at this announcement. Mr. Beery thought how fascinating it was to witness such a rapid emotional transformation, especially as directed at him.
“But sir, you’ve been such a good ear. Can’t you stay just a little bit longer?” Now she was syrupy friendly. Cat put her hand on his arm and began to rub up and down in an awkward but comforting fashion. Mr. Beery, unfamiliar was the physical contact of human beings, closed his eyes and enjoyed the friendly rub – until Cat’s hand began to move farther south than he thought was allowed.
He jumped up and removed her hand from his thigh in one motion. A look of horror was on his face, and he exclaimed, “Miss! Please! I’m going to have to ask to you to control yourself, and now I really must retire for the night.”
He began to remove his jacket from the back of the chair when he felt Cat’s hand slide up his and then up his arm seductively.
“The name’s Cat, by the way. You can call me Kitty Cat, if you want.” She winked.
Horrified, Mr. Beery grabbed his jacket from the chair, tumbling it over in the process. He backed slowly away from the table, arms at his sides, and when at a safe distance, he began to run. He ran aimlessly through the bar, trying in vain to find the exit, yet unfamiliar with the bar layout he had more difficulties than previously assumed. Finally he located the red-lighted exit sign, and like a signal from Jehovah himself, and trust his body through it and out into the cold night air.
If the night had been beautiful he wouldn’t have noticed. If the moon were bright he wouldn’t have seen. If cows had begun to rain down from the heavens, Bill Beery would have had been the only human on earth to not witness the mystery, for all he saw was his exit from the horror that waited for him inside the bar. Finally he found his bike, hidden right where he had left it, and peddled as fast has his stubby legs would carry him away from Cat.
Yet as he ran he couldn’t understand why he was so afraid of this woman. His body told him to be afraid, and his mind seemed to concur, yet he still felt that he was being ridiculous. He tried to slow down a little, to get a grip on himself, but even when he slowed down just ever to slightly his heart began to thump incessantly into his ribcage like a heart attack waiting to burst.
“Why am I so afraid of this woman?” he wondered aloud.
He didn’t know, yet this was not the right time to figure it out. The calm after the storm would have to wait.
He heard Cat’s voice yelling something inaudibly behind him, and he peddled faster and faster. He felt as if his lungs with collapse from the unfamiliar strain, and that his heart would go on strike. But still he peddled on and on, all the way home.

• • •

A disheveled Mr. Beery dashed into the funeral home and steered staunchly towards his office. He ripped off his coat and missed the coat hanger while aiming for the third drawer on left of his desk – where he kept his brandy. In a mad dash to get the alcohol down his throat, he spilled half the bottle on his desk, ruining his first edition copy of the Casper the Friendly Ghost comic book from 1952. But Mr. Beery was long past caring. He tilted his head back and downed the 80-proof alcohol in one gulp. As he gasped for breath and poured another, Mr. Beery heard a car that sounded remarkably like a ’72 Plymouth Duster pull into the funeral home driveway.
He froze.
A drop of sweat dribbled down the back of his neck and collected in his collar, sending chills down his spine. He gulped the second glass of brandy down, dropped to the floor, and crept on cats paws toward the window. As his eyes rounded the edge of the sill, he just caught a slinky bare leg in a spiky black boot disappear into the doorframe.
Mr. Beery closed his eyes and slithered slowly down the wall under the window. Another bead of sweat gathered this time at his hairline and dropped in a perfect line in between his eyebrows, across the brow of his nose, and down to settle atop his upper lip. He could just taste the bittersweet wetness by the tip of his tongue, and it made him hungry.
“You really should learn to be a little kinder to strangers, Mr. Beery.
Although his back was turned away from her, he felt her presence sink into his very skin, her breath infuse will his own, and her words melt his hard outer shell. Who was this presence in the form of woman that shocked him still? he wondered.
And what, if she wasn’t a woman, exactly did she want with him?
He shook his head. Curious dreams of parallel universes and aliens had always haunted him, and this was no time for such fancies. No, now was the time for human thoughts, such as this so-called woman behind him.
“Mr. Beery, you really are embarrassing yourself,” she said.
He took a deep breath, then another. He considered the distance and amount of energy it would require for him to reach the door and escape, but unfortunately, the door was being blocked by his new nemesis. He considered the window next – but no, he had learned from a very exciting and uncharacteristic night of bingo at the funeral home that the window for simply too small for him to fit through and in one piece. So he resorted himself to the fact that there was absolutely no way out of this particular jam, and he was going to have to face her.
Another deep breath, and he turned around very slowly, and smiled, if not rather awkwardly.
Cat, who at first was extremely concerned and almost mildly interested about the mysterious man who funeral home she had causally walked into, had lost all curiosity after five minutes had passed. She had passed the time by examining her nails, which were chipped and unpainted, and by enjoying the sights of the curious man’s office.
At first look, Mr. Beery’s office seemed neat and orderly, and also rather drab and plain. Yet with a further examination of each individual corner and cranny, Cat found dozens of pleasures and conundrums. At every turn of the eye was a delicate wooden figurine of an airplane, hand painted in reds and blues and greens so vivid her childhood fantasies of flight felt re-imagined. They were fashioned with details so intricate they looked as ready to fly as a Boeing on its birthday. Hundreds and hundreds of these tiny wooden joys f
“I – I am simply afraid, Ms. Sommers, that I am much too old for you,” replied Mr. Beery, straitening his hopelessly busted glasses.
“Which won’t matter once we’re naked.”
“Ms. Sommers!”
“Oh, fine.” Cat unstraddled herself from the terrified Mr. Beery, crossed her arms, and turned away.