“How did you think it was done, buddy?” Joe Black asked, pushing his goggles up onto his tousled hair. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing dignified about disarticulating a body. It’s a messy job.”
“I guess I just … it’s not what I expected.”
He couldn’t move. Couldn’t stop his eyes from darting around the room. He didn’t want to step over the cardboard coffin stretched out in front of him. He didn’t want to step foot into the room at all.
“You’ll get used to it,” Joe assured him.
Joe picked up what looked like an ordinary carving knife. He glanced at Scott, caught him wincing, and put the knife back down.
“It’s a bit weird at first.” There was no condescending tone, more instructive like a teacher to a student. “You learn a lot by simply doing it. A bit of trial and error. Actually it’s not that different from carving a Thanksgiving turkey.” He smiled at Scott.
Joe turned back to the counter, picked up one of the pieces. Scott couldn’t tell what it was. He didn’t want to look and yet he found himself mesmerized by Joe’s hands pulling plastic wrap and folding it over and over with a slow, almost reverent touch.
“I try not to be wasteful,” Joe continued, keeping his back to Scott as he started wrapping the next piece in line. “It’s the least we can do when people are generous enough to donate their bodies. Right? Every week surgeons are learning some new, innovative technique. And they’d never be able to do that without me providing working models.”
Scott appreciated that Joe didn’t draw attention to his reaction. Instead, Joe remained calm while Scott was acting like a total jerk. He knew exactly what he had signed up for and had read plenty about the subject. He had no illusions about what were in the previous packages that Joe Black had sent to him to store. Although he had to admit that it was certainly easier when he could accept the UPS or FedEx deliveries and cart the packages into his walk-in refrigerator or put them in one of his freezers.
All along he knew the packages contained body parts that were used for educational conferences and for research. Early on Joe had bragged about the surgical conferences that were his specialty. On paper and in his mind, Scott Larsen had justified the extra income as a noble service. So he needed to get over his squeamishness.
Like embalming and cremation, this, too, was just business.
“You really have a nice facility here,” Joe told him, glancing around as he started to work on the torso that was left on the other table. “And don’t worry. I’ll clean everything up. Get it sparkling the way you had it.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about that.”
Scott hated to think Joe might believe he had a problem with any of this. In an attempt to restore their camaraderie Scott tried to take interest in what Joe was doing. “So I guess you have orders for all these different … parts?”
“More orders than I can supply.” He took out a jar of Vicks VapoRub, dipped a gob, and started smearing it on the torso. “It’s hard to keep up.”
“What’s that you’re doing?”
“A little trick of the trade. The torsos are popular with medical-device companies to showcase their new equipment, to teach a new technique. Sometimes the surgeons’ll work on them for several hours and well, I don’t have to tell you. A couple of hours and you know how bad it’ll start smelling.”
“Oh sure.”
“I rub Vicks VapoRub into the skin before I freeze it. Then when it defrosts it smells like menthol. Which is much better than what it ordinarily smells like.”
“Wow. That’s really … smart.”
“You morticians have plenty of your own tricks, right? You guys are like magicians when it comes to making corpses look good. Sometimes even better than what they looked like when they were alive.”
“Families have high expectations.”
Before Scott realized it, Joe had him talking about his own techniques. He even told Joe how he cheated sometimes and left off the socks and shoes because he hated dealing with feet. He couldn’t even remember when he stepped over the cardboard coffin and came into the room. Soon he was gowned up, rinsing and wrapping and telling more stories. Even made Joe laugh a couple of times. They cleaned up the room together and planned to meet for drinks later in the evening on the beach.
Scott had gotten so carried away, actually having a good time, that it wasn’t until after Joe had left that he realized he’d never asked where he parked. Nor had he dared to ask him about the second body.
CHAPTER 17