Just Kill Me by Adam Selzer Page B

arranged, and they all expect you to be able to guess their preferences. Even the most hardened skeptics in the ghost-hunting business probably think their baggers have psychic powers.
    Plus, the porta-potty blue of the uniforms is really, really not my shade. And they let me get away with the two-tone hair, as long as I tie it back, but I have to wear a Band-Aid over my lip ring, which is supposed to make me look more respectable to the old people but probably just makes them think I have herpes or something.
    Trying to do the job on one hour of sleep is torture.
    The line of registers beep and ding. The clang of the grocery carts sounds like the gurneys that carry bodies through my basement.
    â€œYou’re doing it wrong,” one old lady whines. “Eggs get their own bag. You just put a bag of rice on top of them!”
    The previous old lady was mad that I didn’t put enough things in with her eggs to stop them from bouncing around in her car.
    I’ve never gotten used to this, having people complain about me right in front of me. I see their scowling, disapproving faces when I close my eyes at night. Sometimes I think of good ways to respond to their complaints, but I never actually say them. Even in my sleep.
    One old woman today is such a freaking bat that I find myself imagining shoving her into the trunk of her car and just letting her roast inside of it. As she drives away, I wander around to the side of the store, where the break area is. Kacey—who is sort of my “work wife”—is taking a smoke break, and I take a seat across from her and pull out my phone to look up new disparaging words for “old person” in the OED . You’re onlyreally supposed to go to the break area if you need a cigarette, but the OED is my version of smoking, in a way. My addiction. It calms me down and relieves me of stress.
    â€œâ€Šâ€˜Grave-porer,’ ” I say. “First recorded in 1582.”
    â€œWhat’s that mean?”
    â€œAn annoying old person. Also, ‘mumpsimus,’ 1573; ‘huddle-duddle,’ 1599; and ‘crusty cum-twang,’ same year.”
    â€œYou just made that one up.”
    I hand her the phone and let her see for herself. Most of those terms were coined by Thomas Nashe, who was sort of an Elizabethan insult comic and pornographer. He comes up in the OED a lot if you’re looking up naughty words.
    You can’t go around using most of these antique swear words in casual conversation without looking like a nut, but it’s nice to know they’re there.
    The morning drags on. I can’t wait to get to the graveyard.

    When I finally get off work, I sleep through most of the Blue Line ride into the city, except for a part when some lady across from me is telling a little kid how to pray to the archangel Michael if he ever gets chased by witches. You don’t want to sleep through a scene like that.
    Rick and Cyn are waiting for me by the cemetery gates, holding hands. Cyn takes one of my hands, so all three of us walk into the cemetery like we’re off to see the Wizard of Oz. I nearly start whistling. Rick actually does.
    Graceland is a gorgeous cemetery. It looks like it should be autumn in there, even though it’s June and hot as hell. There are statues everywhere among the beautiful trees. Not a bad place to get planted. There’s lots of interesting company—architects, film critics, boxers, robber barons. Charles Dickens’s no-good brother Augie is in here someplace, too. You know that guy’s got some stories.
    Rick starts pointing out notable graves right away. We walk up to this really spooky statue that looked like a grim reaper or something, and he shows me a decaying stone nearby that marks the grave of John Kinzie, an early settler who killed another early settler, Jean La Lime, in a drunken brawl. This is his fourth grave—they kept moving Kinzie’s body when the earliest