It’s a Living

by Cindy Pereira

He’s not a bad man, per se—but rent’s due, and the Flames didn’t win like he thought they would. Plus, he’s just a contractor, so the regular rules regarding company-client intimate relationships don’t apply, do they? Not like he has time to check under the dirty laundry and old boxes of take-out for the crumpled paperwork, anyway.

He’s dead. Haunting the client’s home—wearing her deceased husband’s peppery cologne that always makes him almost sneeze, opening doors, and changing the channel from TLC to the Cooking Network whenever she leaves the room for more than a few minutes. Shit, he’s so dedicated that he even asked the widow for a pair of her husband’s boots so he can stomp in the attic right above their marital bed and leave footprints in the snow next to the birdfeeders.

She still fills those diligently even though she complained to the Mister that it feels like a rotten trick since the neighbour’s cat hangs around in their yard to slaughter the songbirds picking at the seeds. But he liked listening to them sing in the morning while drinking his coffee.

He should’ve known things were about to go sideways once she stopped leaving out cups of coffee the way her husband drank it, black and piping hot, so that he could savour its bitterness. She’s started serving tea—one day it was chai with honey, another lemon and Earl Grey. He can’t remember when he told her that coffee gives him the shakes.

After she drove him out to the canyon where her husband took the last photo he’d ever take, she started slipping him extra, under-the-table pay. She dangles her legs over the edge and points to the rocks where the Mister broke his neck.

That night, he perches at the corner of her mattress and whispers over and over, “I know what you did, I know what you did.”

She smiles, feigns sleep, and he deposits another cheque.