By Jessica Slee

“Most people go for cremation,” I say to my newest client, sitting across the desk from me. I’ve gotten him a soda, and he fiddles nervously with the bottle cap. Keeps unscrewing and replacing it, like he doesn’t know what else to do with his hands. It’s a regional favorite, flavored like peaches.

When I’m selling it, it’s easier for the family to deal with. Viewings can be depressing. You can keep your grandma on the shelf, you can take her to the ocean, or you can have her ashes made into jewelry. His reaction—or more accurately, his lack of one—makes me think I’m pushing too hard, so I try a different approach.

“First death in the family?” I ask, as full of compassion as a person with another appointment in an hour can be.

“Yes. I came to the nursing home the day he died. He was fine when I saw him, but I got a call, hours later, that he’d passed away in his bed.” His mouth snaps closed, like he hadn’t meant to say so much. “He was…not a great man. But he was still my father.”

“We understand.” I ditch any pretense of being paternal myself, and instead go back to my pitch. “It’s cheaper, it’s environmentally friendly, it’s not tied to any one religion—unless you practice?”

“No.” Again, the cap comes off. “Yeah. Let’s go with that.” 

“You don’t have to rush into things. If there are other family members you need to consult?”

“There aren’t.” The cap goes back on. “Your rates seem fair. And I just want to get the whole thing over with, as soon as I can.”

“We understand,” I repeat. The paperwork is already in the printer tray. It’s been a hot summer in Georgia, and I bite my tongue before I tell him it’s a good thing he’s not going to be putting his father in the ground in this weather. “Just fill this out, and we’ll take care of everything else.”

“As soon as possible, please. I just…don’t want to have to think about it anymore, I mean.”

Whatever he needs to grieve. I just nod as he slides the completed forms back towards me.

I have a service in the afternoon, and the body is all ready to go, dressed in his finest, flowers on the lapel. There’s a card and a basket of fruit sitting pretty on the front table for the family, one of those mindlessly kind gestures we do that gets us so much repeat business. He looks at the fruit, and laughs from the back of his throat. 

“More peaches?” he asks. He’d left the half-drunk bottle of soda behind in my office.

“It’s Georgia,” I say, by way of explanation. 

~

I’m in luck. The body has some titanium rods in the spine. And gold caps on three of the teeth.

Cause of death and any medical conditions are communicated as a courtesy—I’d hate to embalm someone with jaundice, only for the regular process to turn their skin green. I need to know to remove their pacemaker, if they have one, to prevent the battery from exploding during cremation. Not that it matters in this case. Cardiac arrest, like many of the bodies I receive. The man was approaching eighty, and I had no reason to suspect foul play. Remembering my client’s strange behavior, I use a pair of pliers to rip the gold caps off the teeth before I load the body in for cremation. I can dig through the ashes afterwards for the rest of the implements. I follow the changing value of gold with all the passion of a religious convert. At $106 a gram, finishing the equation is just simple mathematics: 3 grams per crown. Over $900 of gold in that one mouth. We see dozens of bodies a week. And I’ve been practicing for decades.

No one ever questions where Grandma’s replaced knee went when we hand over their urn. The plastic components I dispose of, but the metals—titanium, cobalt alloys, and even gold—I keep for myself.

My client will be picking up the remains tomorrow. The rods go into a locked drawer, the gold in a pouch with a dozen similar shavings, ready to be discreetly sold. 

~

The urn is ceramic, one of the cheapest we have. It has doves and olive boughs glazed into its surface, the top snugly sealed. I hand it over to my client, who takes it as if he is greeting a stranger. His father’s obituary has already run in the papers. He’d been a real estate investor. Survived by one son, who inherited everything.

He shakes the urn slowly, as if surprised at the sound of the ashes settling. “It’s strange,” he says to me. “I’ve always wondered, what happens to an implant or a prosthetic, if it would be included? I mean, a prosthetic limb is as much a part of a person as anything else, right? Can you imagine, something like that rattling around in there?”

“We remove those first. It’s…not something people usually request. Or think about.” Perhaps, I was wrong, to believe no one would notice or care. This client, in particular, continues to be unusual in that way.

“So, his two fake teeth in the front, they’re not in here?” he asks, and I feel the sweat on my brow freeze.

“What?”

“He had a few gold fillings on his molars, right? What about those?”

I watch his face as I lie. “Oh, it doesn’t survive the process.”

His eyes narrow, and I realize something. Someone wanting to poison another might take the pits from any stone fruit—like peaches—and grind them down to release the chemical amygdalin. When consumed, it becomes cyanide. Causing cardiac arrest.

In that moment, we each understand what the other has done. 

I break the silence first.

“You can always send me more business, you know. If you ever have any.”